


Legend Has It

by GeneralIrritation



Series: The Girls Who Broke the World [2]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-05-25 07:44:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 97,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6186352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeneralIrritation/pseuds/GeneralIrritation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>NOW WITH AN AFTERWARD FROM THE AUTHOR!</p><p>Six years after LIFE IS STRANGE and almost one year after GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL HELLA, private investigator Chloe Price and photographer (and schoolteacher) Max Caulfield move back to Arcadia Bay... for what proves to be the final time.</p><p>generalirritation.tumblr.com</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. No-Shit Sherlock

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, all! GeneralIrritation, here.
> 
> What you are about to read is a sequel to a story I wrote called "Gun, With Occasional Hella." So if you haven't read that, then you're gonna be lost. Actually, for the best experience, play the game up to the last choice in Episode Five, turn the game off (don't even dignify that choice with a response), then read GWOH, then come here. I'll take care of you. I promise.
> 
> And to all you returning GWOH readers: Welcome back! Here, have some fluff.

**Chapter 1: No-Shit Sherlock**

_December 13, 2013_

Above the town of Arcadia Bay, in the ink-black Oregon sky, winter’s first snow began to fall.  It had been the beginnings of a warm winter, staggering in after a curiously warm autumn, but now the atmosphere of Arcadia Bay seemed to be righting itself.

In the closing hours of this Friday the thirteenth, the first flurries fell on a nearly abandoned street near the center of town, upon which only two souls tread.  They were both teenage girls.  The taller one with blue hair had her arm tightly around the shoulders of the smaller one with brown hair, though less in a show of affection, and more as a means of support.

Chloe Price and Max Caulfield had just finished attending their first (and, from the looks of things, final) party hosted by the Vortex Club.  It was organized by Victoria Chase and her two drones (as Chloe called them) Courtney Wagner and Taylor Christensen, and was held at the Arcadia Bay YMCA, which Victoria had rented out personally with her own money after interim principal of Blackwell Academy of Arts & Sciences Michelle Grant had denied her request to use the Blackwell pool.

The Vortex Club had fallen on hard times since the previous October, when its de-facto leader, Nathan Prescott, had apparently snapped, attempting to shoot Chloe and _succeeding_ in non-lethally shooting Max, which had put her in a coma for four days.  From there, he was linked to a number of sexual assaults and one murder, that of Chloe’s best friend Rachel Amber.  The shooting of Max Caulfield had also brought to light Nathan’s connection to Mark Jefferson, who appeared to be the mastermind behind a number of foul deeds in Arcadia Bay.  Jefferson was awaiting trial, while Nathan in the midst of a protracted series of hearings determining his mental fitness to do the same.

And thus, the name of The Vortex Club was mud in the eyes of the students at Blackwell.  Victoria, in an effort to keep the Vortex Club from destabilizing completely, had forgone the usual rigid dress code and invite list in favor of an open door policy.

The party was a disaster anyway.  Only twenty-five people showed up, and of those twenty-five, only six felt up to dancing, but not for long.  And even Courtney and Taylor had taken to giving Victoria the side-eye when they saw who she was chatting up in the corner.

_“Warren,”_ Max said as Chloe was holding her up on the way to Chloe’s truck, which she had dubbed _“The Beast.”_ Max had decided to experiment with alcohol this evening, after she had seen how the rest of the partygoers were looking at her: with a mixture of admiration and pity.  More than one person had asked her of she was alright, which had prompted the evening’s foray into alcoholic beverages.  It took four beers to reduce Max Caulfield to the mess she was now.

“What about Warren?” Chloe asked.  She was genuinely amused, but still felt the oncoming dark cloud within her that she felt when she heard Max (or Rachel before her) talk about anyone in a somewhat intimate context that wasn’t her.

“Warren,” Max said, “and _Victoria_ _.”_

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “It’s weird, isn’t it?”

“Warren’s a nice guy,” Max said as she staggered underneath Chloe’s arm.  “And she has him eating out of the palm of her cloven hoof.”

“It sounds like you’re pining over him,” Chloe said, a little of the bitterness creeping into her voice.  They had come to the corner of Fifth and Harrison, where Chloe had parked The Beast.  Max shook off Chloe’s arm gently and stood, swaying under the street light.

“I’m not _pining_ over him.”

“Didn’t he want to go out with you though?  To the point of blowing up your phone?  I mean it’s okay if you…”

Max interrupted her.  “I’m not… he’s my _friend._ I didn’t want to get with him, but… It’s just…  It’s nice to be _wanted._ Even if it’s by someone that _I_ don’t want.  And now that’s gone… and I’m a little sadder than I thought I’d be… and I’m worried that I might be a shitty person because of that.”

There was enough of the residual resentment within Chloe to consider saying that while it may not have made Max a bad person, it sure as hell made her a less-than-great one.  But it was an urge she successfully fought.

“Max,” Chloe said.  “The world is… _hella_ unpredictable.  I don’t blame you for taking whatever you can get.”

Chloe unlocked the passenger door on The Beast and opened it for Max, but Max just… _stood_ there.

“Chloe?”

“Yeah, Max?”

Max looked up at her, and she could see that Max’s eyes were glassy.  That could have been the alcohol, but given her own experience in the field as of late, Chloe was convinced they were tears.

“I love you,” Max said.  “I love everything about you… Have I told you that?”

There was nothing rhetorical about the question.  Max was honestly asking whether or not she had told Chloe that.  But more than this, Chloe could detect that these were not the words of a drunken woman, although the words of one buoyed by the courage that drunkenness provides.  Chloe could see that Max was in the eye of an alcohol storm: a serene center surrounded by slurring and staggering.  So focused was Chloe on divining Max’s intent that the weight of her statement just now hit her.

_Huh?_

“I mean,” Max said, “I _know_ we’re friends, and I _know_ me saying this is weird, and I _know_ that if you take it the way I really mean it then you’re gonna get, like, really scared and try to play it off and talk your way out of it, but… I want to _be_ with you.  You’re wonderful.  And life shits on you.  And I want to be with you because you make me happy, and then… then life can shit on both of us… or… or something.  I want to make _sense_ right now, and I’m not doing that, and… and…”

Chloe blinked a few times.  “Max, I, uh…”

She didn’t know what to say.  The fact that Max was coming toward her confused matters, and that she was now putting her lips on her own banished all thought completely.

The ghostly after-image of the words _“She’s my friend”_ faded the longer the kiss went on, and Chloe closed her eyes and luxuriated in Max’s warmth on this cold December night.  Chloe had been so wrung out by life for most of the year that she didn’t know how much she missed physical human contact until it was being supplied by her drunk best friend, complicating matters in an already complicated life.

But the kiss ended, as all unexpectedly good things must.  Max pulled away and looked at the pavement, swaying back and forth as she did so.

“Say something,” Max said.  “Anything.”

Chloe thought that trying to reassure Max would make things more awkward than they already were, so… jokes it was.

“You taste like Bud Light Lime-A-Rita.”

Max looked at her and smiled.

“You drank Bud Light Lime-A-Rita, Max.  Like a _peasant.”_

Max laughed.  Tragedy averted.

“You ready to go back?” Chloe asked.

“I’m ready,” Max said.  “I’m… I’m… I’m ready for the _mop-shit,_ shaka-brah…”

_Mop-Shit?_

“Did you mean _‘mosh-pit?’”_

Max smiled some more.  “You’re cool,” she said.  “You _get_ it.”

Chloe drove Max back to the Blackwell girls’ dorm and walked her up to her room, taking off Max’s shoes for her and even tucking her fully-clothed body into bed before turning off the light and leaving for home.

She crept up the darkened stairs to her room, mindful of the sleeping Joyce and Step-Douche (who had agreed to let her go to the party after prolonged negotiations) in the next room.

Chloe sat at her desk, lit a bowl, and stared out the window.

How does one proceed in a world where your best friend kisses you in a drunken stupor?  How much of that kiss was _owed_ to that drunken stupor?

And how screwed were you if you _liked_ it?

Chloe was not so blinded by friendship that she couldn’t concede Max's status as a very pretty girl, and the fact that she was a fantastic human being was not up for debate.  Even as she was recovering from her coma, even as she was negotiating gallery showings for her work after the media got hold of the story of the brave young photographer who took a bullet for her friend, Max still helped Chloe through her grief for Rachel.  She _still_ was.  She was never more than a phone call away, and even defied her parents’ wishes by staying at Blackwell after she got out of the hospital, if only for Chloe’s sake.

Did she love Max Caulfield?  Yes.

Did she love Max Caulfield the way Max Caulfield seemed to love her?  That was still a question mark.

But was Max Caulfield _worthy_ of being loved in that way?  Well, all signs seemed to point to yes.

By the time she had decided that she would adopt a wait-and-see approach, the sun had already come up.  She went downstairs, said hello to Joyce and, in a display of magnanimity so unlike Chloe that it gave Joyce pause, offered to give her a ride to work at the Two Whales Diner in exchange for some food to go.

Armed with two Styrofoam containers of greasy diner food, two bottles of water, and a bottle of ibuprofen that she had taken from the kitchen, Chloe made her way back to Blackwell.  She softly knocked on Max’s door, making sure not to exacerbate what must be a raging headache.

Max opened the door.  She was still wearing her clothes from last night.  Her hair was a mess and her eyes were bloodshot.  Chloe couldn’t help but smile at this.  It was like looking at a kitten trying not to fall asleep.

“I bring hangover cure,” Chloe said in a voice that was barely above a whisper.  Max took the food from her, placed it on the bed, and gave Chloe a limp hug.  After producing the water and the ibuprofen, Max went to her stereo and turned on her soothing acoustic indie shit.  The two girls sat on her bed and ate in an amiable silence.

“Did I do anything embarrassing last night?” Max asked after she had swallowed a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

_Now we get to the interesting part,_ Chloe thought.

“You told me you loved me, you told me you wanted to be with me, and then you kissed me.”  Chloe made sure to smile as she said this, ready to josh her hungover friend if she showed any sign of chagrin, but it was also a way to conceal how curious about this whole situation Chloe actually was.

But Max just nodded, and went for more eggs.

“Nothing to say to that?” Chloe asked.

Max looked at Chloe, the light from the window hitting her blue bloodshot eyes just so.

“I asked if I did anything _embarrassing,”_ Max said, and left it at that.

Chloe could only stare at her.

* * *

 

_February 28, 2019_

A blast from a bygone era rolled up to the Dayton Arms apartment building in downtown Seattle.  It was a 1981 A-11 Checker Cab, long since decommissioned, its crème and green paint job almost entirely subsumed by rust.  Its engine sounded like a smoker’s lungs, and when it shut off, the sputtering and coughing fit the automobile underwent only drew even further comparison.

From its driver’s side emerged Chloe Price, a chocolate brown fedora resting back on her head and a bang of blonde hair with blue tips coming from underneath.  She made sure the back of her long brown trench coat didn’t get caught before she slammed the creaky door of the ancient taxi.

Down the steps of the small, deceptively expensive apartment building came Max Caulfield, nervously scratching the back of her head, where her medium brown tresses had been until two days prior.  Max had gotten a pixie cut, and while Max had developed a habit of checking the mirror, trying to reconcile her new appearance with the appearance she had been used to, Chloe’s reaction to the new do had been… _more_ than favorable.

Max’s hand dropped from her head.  “What the hell is _that?”_

Grinning broadly, Chloe handed Max a manila envelope.  Max opened it and looked at the document inside.

Applying for and obtaining any manner of state government license is a long and costly affair, and one of the most reliable ways of bringing haste to the process was having connections who could speed things up.  The previous November had begun with Chloe solely associating with drug dealers, burnouts, and sundry other seedy characters in the underground of Arcadia Bay, Oregon.  After Chloe had solved three murders and a kidnapping, and had broken up two separate drug rings, Chloe’s connections now consisted of Arcadia Bay’s police chief (who wanted to save face after widespread corruption had been revealed within the ABPD) and Arcadia Bay’s mayor (who wanted to publicly deny any knowledge of wrongdoing).  They were more than happy to pull the strings and lower the hoops that stood in Chloe’s way of obtaining the license that would provide state sanction as a private investigator. 

The license that Max was holding in her hand now.

“Congratulations,” Max said.

Chloe bowed.

Max smiled.  “You still haven’t told me what that is.”

Chloe looked at the cab.  “It’s a cab.  I got it at a junkyard.”

“I can see that,” Max said.  “Why did you buy a cab at a junkyard.?”

“Well, I’m not gonna drive it around like _this,”_ Chloe said.  “I’m gonna restore it.  New paint-job, tires, wiring.  New engine, too.  It’s gonna be expensive, but with all the Denise Leonard money I still have, I can more than afford it.”

“I thought you were going to get an office with the Denise Leonard money.”

“This _is_ my office,” Chloe said.  “Clients email me with their case, I give them an address.  I pick them up, we talk it over, and I drop them back off.  Plus if someone tries to weasel out of paying me, I can speed up and drive like a crazy person until they do.”

Max nodded.  “Why an old cab, though?”

Chloe looked at her uncomprehendingly.  “Because it’s _cool!”_

Max laughed, but it was half-hearted.  There is an unspoken telepathy between people who love each other, and Chloe could tell something was bothering Max.

“Come in,” Max said.  “I need to talk to you about something.”

Chloe and Max held hands as the elevator took them up to the fourth floor of the Dayton Arms.  Once they were in apartment 416, Chloe kicked off her boots and hung her hat and coat on the rack, revealing a thrift store bought t-shirt with the logo of something called _Lucha Underground_ emblazoned on its front, and her hair, which had gotten longer and shaggier and was done in a loose, short ponytail.  Chloe called it _“The Edward Kenway.”_ Max, picking on her, called it _“The Guybrush Threepwood.”_

Max picked up a printed-out email from the coffee table and handed it to Chloe.

* * *

_Dear, Miss Caulfield._

_Since our mutual lines of inquiry have been opened, our concerns have been taken to the Blackwell Board of Trustees, and their response has been unanimously positive._

_For the upcoming 2019-2020 school year,_ _Blackwell_ _Academy_ _will reinstate its defunct photography program on the lone and sole proviso that you, Maxine Caulfield, will take over teaching duties._

_But time is of the essence, and preparations must be made.  Your prompt response is of paramount importance._

_I look forward to working with you, Miss Caulfield._

_-Michelle Grant  
__Principal  
__Blackwell_ _Academy_ _of Arts and Sciences  
__Arcadia Bay_ _,_ _Oregon_

* * *

Chloe lowered the email.

“This is, uh…”

_Selfish!_

“…sudden.”

“This is the earliest I could come to you with this with something concrete,” Max said.  “I haven’t said yes yet.  I want your blessing.”

“And if I don’t give it?”

“Then I don’t go.”

Chloe looked into Max’s pleading eyes.  The past six years were larded with things Chloe never thought she’d see or live through, but none of them were as surreal or unlikely as being the voice of reason for Max Caulfield.

“Don’t you need a degree to be a teacher?” Chloe asked.

“Not at a private school,” Max said.  “Mark Jefferson didn’t have a teaching degree.”

“Yeah, Max, that’s a _hell_ of a reference to give.”

Max sighed, and walked up to Chloe.

“Chloe, Blackwell stopped offering photography classes the semester after Nathan shot me.  They didn’t want the program associated with him _or_ Jefferson, and having one of his victims teach the class is the only way to remove some of the stigma.  It was the best student photography program in America.  When I was a kid, I _dreamed_ about going to Blackwell.  And now?  Now Kate Bradford is donating more money to the school then the Prescotts ever did.  I’m more famous than Mark Jefferson ever was.  I think I can do some good there.  Blackwell gave me a lot.”

"It gave you a bullet and a four day coma.”

“It gave me _you.”_

Chloe had to hand it to Max.  She knew when to hit the killswitch.  But still…

“Max, I’m trying to start a business, here.”

“You can be a private eye in Arcadia Bay.  The town’s growing, and so’s the number of potential clients.”

“I’m not _licensed_ in Oregon,” Chloe said.  “I just got licensed in Washington State.”

“If Mayor Newman and Chief Tate can get you licensed here, they can get you licensed there.  And even if they can’t, no one would say anything.  The mayor gave you the key to the city, for crying out loud.  You’re famous in Arcadia Bay.”

All these things were true, but Chloe was still perusing her list of reservations.

“How would this even _work,_ though?” Chloe asked.  “We’ll have two apartments?  One here and one in Arcadia Bay?  That’s a _lot_ of money.”

Max shook her head.  “Free room and board.  You know that little house near the girls’ dorm?  The one the principal usually lives in?  It’s been empty since they fired Wells six years ago.  They’re giving it to me.  To _us._ They’ve even offered to furnish it, and as someone who has to be dragged kicking and screaming through an Ikea, I thought that might appeal to you.”

Chloe was impressed by how well Max had covered her bases, but there was still one grave doubt.  She had often embellished her hatred for Arcadia Bay, but even if her opinion of the town were higher, that didn’t change one irrefutable fact.

_I’m happy here._

Not only that, but living in Seattle with Max was the happiest she had been since before her father died.  Maybe it was the happiest she had _ever_ been.  It might not have had anything to do with how far away they were from the town that seemed to delight in kicking the shit out of her on a daily basis… but maybe it did.

And yet she looked at Max, who had her doe-eyes in full effect.  Since that October Monday almost six years prior, she had been so kind to Chloe.  So loving.  So infinitely fucking _patient._ And going back to the Bay seemed to mean a lot to her.  Five years before, Chloe had walked out on Max due to grave doubts about herself, and didn’t see her again for another three.  And no matter how long they’d be together, no matter how happy they could conceivably be, Chloe would still feel like she had to pay for that.

_Now who’s being selfish?_

Chloe sighed.  “I want the same kind of chair that that’s in the principal’s office.  Y’know, the really _cushy_ one?”

_“Thank_ you!” Max said.  She beamed, did an excited little hop, and kissed Chloe.  This kiss slowly dissolved into a warm hug.

Chloe’s mouth was near Max’s ear… A perfect time to whisper song lyrics.

_“I’ve got it baaaad, got it baaaad, got it baaaad…”_

Max rolled her eyes.  “Oh God, Chloe, _really?”_

Chloe looked at Max with a glint in her eye and a maniac’s grin.

_“I’m hot for teacher!”_

Chloe grabbed two handfuls of Max’s ass and kissed her on the nose.


	2. State of Bay

**Chapter 2: State of** **Bay**

The previous November, Chloe Price kissed Max Caulfield beneath the lighthouse at Koch’s Folly after a week of murder, drugs, kidnapping, time travel, car bombs, and ancient prophecies.

Chloe had considered that kiss not only the start of a new life with Max, but the capstone on an old life in Arcadia Bay.  For her actions in that week had pissed off a great many dangerous people in town, and Chloe’s assumption was that her status as a marked woman would bar and prohibit her return to town.

Her assumptions on this front were, to put it charitably, premature.

The Arcadia Bay Police Department had been, up until Chloe’s intervention, rife with corruption, for which two people were primarily responsible: A drug lord named Michael Dixon (whose underworld nom-de-guerre had been _“The Bull,”_ and had been listed as missing since no one had found his body), and Denise Leonard, former CFO of Leonard International, kidnapper, murderer, aspiring drug kingpin, and current federal inmate.

Denise Leonard, upon her arrest, had had a great many Arcadia Bay cops in her pocket, but what few of those cops would ever have assumed was that Denise had kept records of which cops were on the take, and was more than willing share those records with the FBI in an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to shave a few years off of her prison sentence.

And Denise’s dirty cops?  They knew other cops within the department that had taken money from The Bull, and they got ratted out as well.

The resulting manner of shitstorm within the Arcadia Bay Police Department hadn’t been seen since the wilder and woollier days of the Old Testament, and had led to a scary couple of weeks in town when the National Guard had to be called in to take over policing duties because every last man and woman in the ABPD, from the Chief of Police to the shlubs who handed out parking tickets, were investigated and audited.

The Chief of Police, a man named Harold Savoy, went to prison, and his replacement was a former Robbery-Homicide Captain in the Eugene Police Department named Andrew Tate.  In an attempt to curry favor with the public and build a rapport with the Arcadia Bay citizenry while the ABPD was being re-staffed by members of the Oregon State Police and the surrounding police departments, Chief Tate had decided to publicly commend Chloe Price.  The Mayor of Arcadia Bay, Seth Newman (a plump, friendly-natured man who had run unopposed for twenty-five years and had wanted to keep it that way), did the same, giving her The Key to the City.  It was the first time the award had been bestowed on anyone in town.  They had to invent it just for Chloe.

So not only had Chloe solved the murders of Justin Williams and Arnold Trainor and Margarita Newman, not only had Chloe rescued the kidnapped Jennifer Healy, not only had Chloe dissolved two separate drug rings, but Chloe had _single-handedly ended corruption within the Arcadia Bay Police Department._ It was a headline that was truly reader-friendly, and reporter Juliet Watson milked it for all it was worth in an effort that garnered the _Arcadia Bay Beacon_ actual Pulitzer consideration.

And Chloe had gone from _“marked woman”_ to _“virtually untouchable.”_

Everyone in town knew her name, and had a smile for her when she passed.  Mayor Newman was particularly chummy, and had even invited her, Max, and Chloe’s mother Joyce to Thanksgiving dinner at his home.  Chloe turned him down, partly because she wanted to do the holiday thing with Max and Joyce alone, and partly because there was still enough of the high school punk left in Chloe to know that spending a holiday with a politician would ruin her cred, if with no one but herself.

And what of the rest of Arcadia Bay?

Every town has a drug trade, and even though both of its kingpins were either dead or in prison, the Arcadia Bay trade still chugged along, though at nowhere near the level that it had operated at under Denise Leonard and The Bull.  There was no one left to continue Denise’s end of the operation, and indeed, no operation left to continue.  Upon hearing of the wealth of drugs being smuggled onto his shipments, Forrest Leonard (CEO of Leonard International and father of Denise) started hiring people to quadruple check all of the freight entering and leaving his depots.  Leonard considered the extra manpower to be well-worth the cost of the good publicity, and the volume of drugs coming into town through those channels was gone practically overnight.

Which isn’t to say there were no drugs coming into town at all.  The Bull’s operation was taken over by Jonathan Grady (the one Chloe kept calling _“The First Guy,”_ the fellow who delivered a punch that shattered Chloe’s glasses into her cheek, and the man who ultimately dispatched The Bull with two bullets in the head), who wrangled a system of middle-men that formed a connection to a source in Mexico.  The drugs were of a lesser quality and more expensive but, thanks to Chloe, none of the guys in Grady’s operation went to prison when The Bull’s FBI contacts were revealed.  There was an unspoken agreement between the two not to shit in each others’ yards, and it was an agreement Chloe was more than happy to keep her end of.  Not to mention the fact that Grady eschewed the practice of bribing cops altogether, so the rest of the fallout from Chloe’s activities were a minor consideration.

Now, from the moment the handcuffs clicked around Denise Leonard’s wrists, there was a building concern within the town that Leonard International would leave Arcadia Bay, taking all their jobs with them.  Five years earlier, Prescott Development had done exactly that after Nathan Prescott had shot Max Caulfield in a girls’ bathroom at Blackwell which, combined with the dying fishing trade, had nearly brought the town to ruin.  But one key difference separated the two instances: Whereas Sean Prescott had his PR team deliver a statement of support for young Nathan, Forrest Leonard took to the press himself to both publicly condemn Denise, and to set up funds for the families of both Justin Williams and Margarita Newman.  The uproar that greeted Prescott Development in 2013 did not greet Leonard International in 2018.

That, in addition to a new book by Kate Bradford that brought tourists to Arcadia Bay in greater numbers, spelled even more prosperity for the town.  But there was a new and altogether unwelcome strain of tourism that came to Arcadia Bay.  Not illegal or illicit, but more embarrassing and unseemly.

In January of 2019, former Blackwell Bigfoots football star (and classmate of Max Caulfield) Hayden Jones uploaded a seventy-five second video to YouTube.  It was taken in grainy night-vision, out-of-focus, and purported to contain footage of a Sasquatch.

Everyone in town assumed the video to be fake, but the trickle of Sasquatch enthusiasts that came to Arcadia Bay was not so picky.  They were eccentric, generally smelled bad, and tipped poorly.

And this was the Arcadia Bay that Chloe Elizabeth Price returned to on the last Sunday of August in 2019…

* * *

_August 25, 2019_

A fully restored yellow 1981 A-11 Checker Cab with whitewall tires came to the stop light at Tenth and Utica, the first light coming into Arcadia Bay from the north, the car gleaming in the late summer sun in all its forties cool.  Even though it had a checker-pattern strip along the side, the word _“Taxi”_ was present nowhere upon the vehicle.

This was the mobile office of Chloe Price’s private detective business (which Max had to talk her down from calling _“No-Shit Sherlock”_ ).  The car in turns was called _“The Office,” “The Mystery Machine,”_ and _“The Chloe-Mobile.”_ But Max had taken to just calling it _“The Taxi,”_ and it stuck.  Chloe reflected that, for an artist, Max’s imagination ran dry at the worst possible moments.

Chloe, fedora riding back on her head, saw a pick-up truck on the corner with a bumper-sticker that read **“I’D RATHER BE ‘SQUATCHING.”**

Thirty seconds.

Chloe had been in Arcadia Bay for thirty seconds, and already things were off-putting and weird.

That _had_ to be a record.

The light turned green and Chloe hung a left.

Max had moved out of the Seattle apartment at the end of July to get things ready at their new home on the Blackwell campus.  Chloe stayed behind for a month, partly to finish off her case load, and partly because she wanted to bring The Taxi with her.  Chloe’s six months of official detective work in Seattle brought a surprising number of cases with surprisingly little variety.  They were all some variation of either _“Trail My Cheating Spouse,”_ or _“Find My Missing Child.”_ Almost all of them had the same result: _“They Actually_ Are _Working Late,”_ or _“They’re At Their Friend’s House and Were Coming Back Tomorrow Anyway Because They Ran Out of Money.”_ No Denise Leonard depths of intrigue or deception.Her clients could have solved their problems using the internet or (God forbid) _talking_ to the people they were worried about, but peoples’ innate sheepishness and unwillingness to get their hands dirty kept Chloe’s lights on. 

And it sure as hell beat working IT.

Chloe parked The Taxi in a lot near the beach across from a massive brick archway, the ornate metalwork sign above helpfully informing anyone passing by of what was on the other side: **ARCADIA** **BAY** **CEMETERY** **.**

Chloe took her hat off, crossed the street, and walked under the entryway into the graveyard.  She first spared a cursory glance at the first grave marker to the left, a small bit of red granite with an epitaph that just said **“WILLIAMS.”**

She had been informally banned from Justin’s funeral, as at the time she had had theories about Justin’s murder that might have upset the family.  After she had solved his murder, she had received a thank-you card from Justin’s mother Darlene, who gave her a standing invitation for a home-cooked meal at her place of residence, which was a favor Chloe had yet to call in.  She had visited his grave just once before she had left for Seattle, and she made sure to give him a warm thought now, before making her way up the white gravel path leading deeper into the cemetery.

Chloe’s chest tightened as she neared her destination, as it always had.  The white stone absorbed the sun’s rays, appearing to make it glow on its own.

 _RACHEL DAWN AMBER_  
_1994-2013  
_ _Dear Friend and Beloved Daughter_

She had been dead longer than Chloe had known her.  Chloe had considered herself free from the blunt force of the baggage surrounding Rachel’s death at long last.  She had done right in her name, and didn’t feel as handcuffed to her memory as she once did.

But that didn’t mean she didn’t miss her terribly sometimes.  It hit her with full force at times when she least expected it.  She didn’t feel the full weight of lost love with Rachel while she was in the warm cocoon of found love with Max, but Rachel had been fun to talk to.  She knew more than she let on, and had a wicked sense of humor.  She found herself wondering what she would say to Max if they had ever met, or what she would think about the developments in Chloe’s life.  Like, if she’d walk off a runway in Milan, check the alert on her phone, and see that Chloe had become a crime-fighter in Oregon.  Chloe would like to think Rachel would be pleased.  Chloe _knew_ Rachel would laugh.  Hell, she might have done both.

However, there were chambers within Chloe concerning Rachel that had yet to be opened, and she feared what was behind them and what they would do to her.  Chloe couldn’t admit to herself that they were there, but she could _at least_ admit to herself that she couldn’t admit to herself that they were there.

It didn’t make sense to her, either.

Chloe’s body turned away from Rachel’s grave before her head did, keeping eye contact with the white headstone as long as possible.  She finally looked away and…

…she almost bumped into a little girl.

Her skin was the color of an old penny, and her long straight hair came down in a braid over her right shoulder.  She was wearing jeans, Chuck Taylors, and an Oregon Ducks football jersey.  She couldn’t have been a day over eight years old.  Her small eyes bore into Chloe with curiosity.

Chloe knew there was a Native American reservation nearby from their prolonged battles with Prescott Development over the construction of Pan Estates, and that must be where she came from.  She wondered where the girl’s family was.

“Um… Hello,” Chloe said. 

The little girl smiled, cocked two finger guns at Chloe, and walked away.

Chloe looked at her as she passed.

_What the fuck?_

* * *

The second stop on Chloe’s Arcadia Bay Memory Lane Tour was her old house, where Joyce still lived.

Chloe pulled The Taxi up to the curb, ambled up the driveway, and walked in through the unlocked front door.  The interior of the house had been straightened out, and the furniture had been replaced (though the couch the family had had since Chloe was a child was kept in storage, as Chloe had mentioned an interest in keeping it).  Even the carpet had been replaced, leaving Chloe with just a hint of sadness that the wine stain that she and Max had made when they were little was finally gone.

Given Joyce’s status as the owner of The Two Whales, she could afford all of this.  The diner had done well, and when Chloe had gotten her detective’s license in Washington, Joyce texted Chloe saying how proud she was that they were two generations of female small business owners.

Chloe didn’t know how to feel about that.

“Hey, Mom,” Chloe said when she entered the living room.  Joyce saw Chloe from her recliner, where she’d been watching CNN on this, her day off.  She stood up, moving in on her daughter to give her a crushing hug.

“How’s my daughter doing today?”

“Fine.”

“Annnd… How’s my daughter-in-law?”

“E _nough_ with that.”

Now that Chloe had found some semblance of stability and happiness in her life, Joyce (from what Chloe could see at any rate) could finally come to grips with the fact that she had succeeded in raising a child properly.  She was now a Normal Mom with a Normal Child, and Normal Moms bugged their Normal Children about getting married.  Chloe expressed… not _discomfort,_ really, but something next door to it at the prospect of marriage because, much like stock options and 401-Ks, they were things that seemed to happen to people that weren’t Chloe Price.

“You still haven’t officially moved out of here,” Joyce said.

“What?”

“There are still two boxes of stuff in your old room.  Jesus, Chloe, it’s been _years.”_

“Right,” Chloe said.

“Run up and go get them,” Joyce said.  “Then come back and shoot the bull with your mother.  There’s a pizza on the way.”

Chloe paused for a moment to savor the irony in her mother using the phrase _“Shooting The Bull,”_ before she went upstairs to her old room.

The room seemed bigger with nothing in it.  No bed, no dressers, and the closets were empty.  Even the smell of weed, which Chloe had assumed would be baked into the walls for as long as the house stood, had mostly been eradicated.

All that was left were two cardboard boxes of stuff in the middle of the floor. 

The one on the right was a plain brown box with a plain brown lid.  The one on the right, however, was and old Xerox box with a blue border.  Chloe looked at that box with a great… _unease._

Chloe took the brown box down to The Taxi.

* * *

After Chloe and Joyce had talked a lot about a little over a cheese pizza, Chloe got back in The Taxi and made her way to her last stop.

Blackwell.

That she was a significant other of a faculty member that lived on campus, Chloe had access to the staff parking lot at the rear of the school, where she parked her car next to Max’s white Nissan.  Max was at an orientation meeting within the school in preparation for the first day of class, which was tomorrow.  Max had texted Chloe the day before, telling her that her parking permit and the key to the house were at the desk next to the principal’s office.

Chloe, taking the brown box with her, went into the school to get her Blackwell living goodies from the desk, before taking a left from the main entrance to head to the girls’ dorm, where her new house was.

Looking at Blackwell now after all these years of separation from it was like watching an old movie that had been remastered in high-definition.  The actual physical form of the place from her memory was still there, but there were all these flaws in the image that she was too old or too naïve to have seen the first time.  She was looking at a place for children through adult eyes.  If ever Blackwell seemed to be a place where magic happened, if ever the buildings or the landscape itself had merit worth being romanticized, it was gone now.

Chloe hit the sidewalk that led to the house, seeing in the distance the totem pole, Tobanga, still proudly glaring at the empty courtyard in front of the dorm.  The porch of the new house came into view.

Someone was sitting there waiting for her.

She was still tall.  Still trim.  Still beautiful in the way volcanoes, monsoons, and other harbingers of impending doom were.  Her honey colored hair was now long, done up in a pony-tail, making her look like the cover girl on those old _Sweet Valley High_ books they still had in the Arcadia Bay Public Library.

“Hey,” Chloe said.

Victoria Chase looked Chloe up and down disapprovingly before she stood up.

“So you’re a detective now,” Victoria said.  It wasn’t a question.  It wasn’t a hello, either.

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “What about it?”

Victoria nodded grimly.  “It means we have business to discuss.”


	3. The Right to Remain Salty

**Chapter 3: The Right to Remain Salty**

Victoria stood by the blinds in Chloe’s brand new living room, staring through the thin strips of plastic at the courtyard of The Bradford Dormitory.  Her back was turned, and though Chloe couldn’t see her face, she could sense trepidation (or at least what passed for trepidation with someone as fearsome as Victoria Chase) coming off of the blonde woman in waves.

Chloe leaned back on her brand new red couch in her brand new living room of her brand new house attached to The Bradford Dormitory and pulled out a folded pack of Nicorette.  She punched one of the bland tasting, beige pieces of gum out of its little plastic capsule and popped it into her mouth.  She got the nasty little thing nice and chewed before she decided to speak. 

“I have to ask,” Chloe said.  “What’s it like being a teacher’s wife?”

Victoria turned and looked at Chloe with the same kind of dismissal that landed gentry use on the people who clean their stables.

“Warren is a literary agent’s husband,” Victoria said.  “There’s a difference.”

“Of course,” Chloe said.  “Now that I know the level of small talk I’m gonna get, do you mind if I ask how I can help you?”

Victoria took a deep breath.

“Respect,” Victoria said.

Chloe didn’t even have a joke for that.

“If I had any other recourse, if I had _any_ one else to turn to, I wouldn’t be here now.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’re a person I barely know attached to a woman I can’t stand.  I have a problem.  I want to pay you to make it _your_ problem.  And if it’s your problem, Max will wind up knowing about it.  The thought of that makes me _physically_ ill, but because there’s no one else to turn to, I turn to you.  And I want you to _respect_ that.”

The never-ending pissing match between Max and Victoria was now entering its sixth year.  Chloe had only ever asked Max about it once, to which Max shrugged her shoulders and denied knowing what Victoria’s problem was.  Chloe had her theories though: That Max was mad at Victoria because she ended up with Warren.  That Victoria was angry at Max because she ended up with a guy Max would up not wanting, which Victoria’s ego would construe as taking a cast-off from someone she didn’t like, no matter how happy with the guy she had apparently been.  Or that Victoria was _furious_ with Max because Victoria had long harbored a dream of being a photographer, a dream that came true for Max instead of her, even though her own career as Kate Bradford’s literary agent had made her ungodly wealthy.  All Chloe knew for a fact was that, had Chloe been born a less monogamous soul, she’d have told Max and Victoria to just fuck and get it over with.

“Alright,” Chloe said.  “Respect given.  What’s this problem you want to make mine?”

Victoria leaned her back against the bare white wall next to the window, folded her arms, and sighed.

“Every Wednesday, if I’m in town, if I am able, I drive into the country to the Cyrus Haverford Mental Health Facility… I’m sure I don’t need to tell you who lives there.”

It was as though a cloud, massive and viscous, obscured the sun in Chloe’s mind, heralding another ice age.

“Yeah,” Chloe said, trying to keep her voice even.  “Nathan.”

Victoria nodded.  “I’d been going there for five years without a problem, until three weeks ago.  I was held up at the reception desk because Nathan has apparently placed me on a prohibited visitors list.  I can’t get in to see him.”

Chloe looked Victoria up and down.  “Now why would he do a thing like that?”

“That’s just it,” Victoria said.  “He _wouldn’t_ have.  I think the hospital’s keeping me from seeing him.  I need someone to find out why.”

There was a fury building within Chloe, but she didn’t want to break in her new house with the litany of profanity that was bubbling out of her brain.

“I find it hard to believe that there was no one for you to go to with this other than me.”

“Oh, _please,”_ Victoria said.  “There are _millions_ going through that hospital.  If I sent another PI, all they’d have to do is pay them off to come back to me with a bullshit story.  And if Nathan’s in that hospital, you don’t need to be a genius to figure out that some of those millions are coming from the Prescott family, illegal though that may be.  Name another person on Earth less likely to take a bribe from Sean Prescott than _you.”_

Chloe had to concede to herself that Victoria had a point.

“So,” Victoria said, “that’s my problem.  Will you help me or not?”

For the sake of tranquility in a new home, for Max’s sake as much as her own, Chloe took a deep breath, choked back the bile that was threatening to erupt within her, and hoped to God there were no cracks in her poker-face.

“No,” Chloe said.

Victoria said nothing for a moment, using the silence only to blink rapidly.  Chloe could tell that Victoria was not used to being challenged or turned down.

 _“’No?’”_ Victoria asked.  “That’s it?”

Maybe it was the way her lips curled when she said it.  Maybe it was the way her eyebrows arched upward.  Maybe it was her perfectly manicured nails tapping on her left arm with impatience.  It could have been any number of things, but the thin, hair’s-breadth line connecting Chloe to civility violently snapped.

“Actually, that’s not it,” Chloe said.  “No, and _fuck you!”_

Chloe got up and advanced on Victoria.  Victoria’s face was a mask of unimpressed placidity, but that didn’t stop the rest of her body from trying to retreat into the wall she was leaning against.

“You want me to respect how hard it is to come to me for help?” Chloe asked.  “How about you respect how _literally fucking impossible_ it is for me to help you.  Normally, I wouldn't insult someone by going down the laundry list of awful shit Nathan Prescott has done, but I _do_ want to insult you, so here we go.  Nathan Prescott drugged me and tried to sexually assault me.  He drugged and sexually assaulted Kate.  He tried to kill me.  He almost killed Max.  He _did_ kill Rachel.  If someone told me that Nathan was Satan himself, I’d wonder for a second if Satan was _that_ bad.  And you want me to see if he’s _feeling okay?”_

Breath came out of Victoria’s nose in a huff.  “I’ll double your rate.”

“Fine.  Double my rate.  Give me everything you own.  It won’t be enough.”

“Did I say you have to see him?  Or talk to him?  I just want someone to…”

“I.  Don’t.  Give.  A _fuck!_ Nathan Prescott tried to ruin my life, and if he didn’t have such piss-poor aim, he would have succeeded.  Now you’ve proven that you have no idea how to read people, so I’m gonna make this part nice and clear so you don’t get the wrong idea: Get out of my house before I fucking _throw_ you out.”  


* * *

Chloe cooled off as she brought in boxes of stuff from The Taxi.  As she unpacked clothes and various assorted other items conducive to a healthy daily life, she took the time to observe how well her new house was decorated.  It didn’t look like the inside of a house, no, it looked like the decorated parts of a furniture store trying to _approximate_ the inside of a house.  _“Come see what this couch would look like in a room decorated by a Martian with no sense of warmth!”_ Chloe knew Max well enough to conjure that none of this was her doing.  She would have hung up a print somewhere by a photographer whose name Chloe couldn’t pronounce.

After she’d unpacked, she spent a good ten minutes in the cushy principal chair at the small wooden desk in the bedroom, bobbing up and down on the leather chair cushion, trying to make sure her ass and the chair would play nice and become the best of friends.  She spent a brief and shamefully nerdy minute sitting stately in the chair, pressing imaginary buttons on the armrest, pretending she was the captain of the Starship Enterprise, and for that minute, those equally imaginary Romulan Warbirds had no idea what hit them.

She made her way back to the living room and sat back down on the couch in front of the TV.  She hadn’t owned a TV since she’d left Arcadia Bay in the summer of 2014, after Max had graduated from Blackwell.  Which wasn’t to say she or Max didn’t watch television, but they had done it on her laptop.

Chloe picked up the remote from the coffee table and noticed that the glass surface was spotless.  It was bereft of any kind of soul or sense of being owned whatsoever.  Chloe took her index finger and left a smudgy finger print dead-center on the table’s glass surface, marring its otherwise flawless shine.

 _There._ My _table._

Chloe heard a key hit the lock a little after five PM, and Chloe shot to her feet.  She hadn’t seen Max in a month.

The door opened and Max appeared in black slacks and a gray button-up shirt.  She saw Chloe and held up a finger.

“Wait,” Max said.

Chloe knew what this meant.  She stepped to the other side of the table and widened the position of her feet on the carpet.

Max closed the door behind her, stuffed her keys into the satchel she had around her shoulder.  She set the satchel down on the floor.

Then she bolted the few feet toward Chloe, and jumped.

Max’s arms came together around Chloe’s neck, and her legs wrapped around the taller woman’s waist.  Their lips met.

Max liked doing this when they hadn’t seen each other for a while, even though half the time her run-and-glomp knocked Chloe to the floor.  Max was relatively small, but she was _dense._

Max broke the kiss.  “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

Chloe lowered Max to the floor. 

“Have you checked out the bed yet?” Max asked.  “It’s got one of those foam mattresses like in the commercials.  I tried it out, and you _can_ jump up and down on it without spilling a glass of water.”

“I thought they used wine in the commercials.”

“They do,” Max said.  “But I didn’t want to risk it.”

Chloe smiled.

Being as both of them had eaten quite a bit that day (as Chloe had had pizza with Joyce, and the teachers had brought in subs from a local shop that catered), there were no real dinner plans.  The two took to sitting on the couch and ignoring the TV as Max told Chloe about her month in Arcadia Bay as the sun went down.

“I’m gonna get some strawberries,” Max said.  “You want anything?”

“No,” Chloe said.  “No, I’m fine.”

Max got up and got her satchel before she left the living room.  Chloe turned her attention to the TV, looking at it, but not really watching it, letting the images seep senselessly into her brain as she vaguely heard Max’s phone ring from the kitchen.

Chloe dwelled on the fact that she needed a new weed hook-up.  Max had never bugged Chloe to quit smoking cigarettes, but she had, for her own sake as much as her girlfriend’s.  The unintended result of this was that Max was more accommodating to Chloe’s pot habit, though she drew the line at smoking it in their new home.  So not only did Chloe need a new dealer, she needed a new place to smoke what she’d been dealt.  Back when she was going to Blackwell herself, she bought weed off of her fellow students, so… maybe one of the kids would be holding?

 _I’d be buying weed from one of my girlfriend’s students,_ Chloe thought.  _That would be awkward.  New plan._

Max came back into the living room with a small glass bowl of strawberries in one hand and her phone pressed to her ear in the other.

“Alright,” Max said.  “Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow… Bye.” 

Max hung up the phone and looked at Chloe.  She had the flustered look of someone whose house of cards just fell over.

“Chloe,” Max said.  “Did you threaten to throw the wife of one of my co-workers out of our new home this afternoon?”

So Victoria had tattled to Warren, and Warren had just gotten finished tattling to Max.  A network of significant others forming a chain reaction that spelled a lack of kept secrets and an abundance of hurt feelings.  It dawned on Chloe that high school infects all of the adults around it.

“No,” Chloe said.  “I _promised_ to throw her out of our new home.  Those are two different things.”

Max sighed.  She set both her phone and the strawberries down on the coffee table, before she plopped down next to Chloe.

“You do realize how awkward this makes things for me.”

“I do,” Chloe said.  “And I’m sorry about that.  But… _Jesus,_ Max, do you know what she wanted me to _do?”_

“Yeah.  Snoop around a hospital and make sure Nathan’s okay.  For double your rate.”

It was at this point that Chloe rose from the sofa, making her way around the other side of the coffee table, standing in the middle of the living room so Max could see her.  Chloe didn’t want to get loud with Max.  Chloe _refused_ to get loud with Max.  But given how sensitive a subject Nathan was with Chloe, it would be an effort that required her whole body.

“Okay, all the bad shit with me and Nathan?  Let’s put that in a box.  Kate?  Rachel?  Going in the box.  I shouldn’t _have_ to put them in the box, and I don’t _want_ to put them in the box, but for the sake of this argument?  Into the box they go.  So now that that’s off the table… Why do _you_ want me to help Nathan?  I mean, I _get_ why Victoria wants to help him.  They were tight.  But _you?_ He almost killed you.  He took four days from your life.”

“Well,” Max said.  “I got four days in another timeline, so it all evens out…”

“Max, this isn’t funny.”

“I know,” Max said, shaking off her bad attempt at a joke.  “It’s just… When I was over there, Kate tried to jump off of a building.  In fact, it was _this_ building.  This house is connected to the building Kate Marsh’s life could have ended on.  But… I stopped her.  A few days after that, I visited her in the hospital, and she told me she believed in forgiveness and redemption.  She forgave Victoria because she thought that maybe there was some good in her.  And… she was _right._ So…”

“So… what?”

“So I want to believe that… even in that asylum for the rest of his life that somehow, some _way,_ one good thing can come from Nathan Prescott.”

“Well,” Chloe said.  “He can take that one good thing and shove it up his ass.  He could cure cancer and I’d never forgive him.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Max said.  “Victoria’s not asking you to.  And I remember the two of us talking to him last year, and _he’s_ not asking you to forgive him.  No one’s forgetting or forgiving what he did.  It’s just… I’ve learned that if you’ve only ever met someone at their lowest point, then you haven’t met them at all.”

“You get that from a fortune cookie?” Chloe asked.

“No,” Max said.  “I learned it from _you.”_

Chloe blinked a couple of times.  _Jesus,_ Chloe thought.  _She’s_ good.

It seemed that Max had quietly and unassumingly taken the potential fate of someone as vile and disgusting as Nathan Prescott and used it as a cornerstone to her own personal philosophy on life.  Chloe knew why Max never told her about this: She’d have flipped her shit.

Chloe would have to ask herself questions about this.  They would be serious, and altogether uncomfortable.

She put her hands in her pockets, looked down at the floor, and scratched her forehead.  Chloe knew herself well enough to know that this little dance was her involuntary physical prelude to doing something she didn’t want to do.

Max knew this about her as well.  She smiled a smile that was uncharacteristically predatory.  Chloe knew that this was Max’s involuntary physical prelude to… something else.

She picked one of the strawberries out of the bowl and bit off the end.  She got up and walked toward Chloe, stopping mere inches away.

Max raised the strawberry and dotted the end of Chloe’s nose with the bitten end, getting strawberry juice on her.  It was cold.  It must have been in the fridge.

She still had that smile on her face.  “It’s not as though you’d have to see Nathan, or talk to him, or communicate in any way with him at all… Right?”

“Right,” Chloe said.

Max nodded, leaned in, and licked the strawberry juice off the tip of Chloe’s nose.  Chloe closed her eyes and smiled, the quiet grunt of a laugh escaping her parted teeth.  Chloe was going to say yes to the case.  And she knew that _Max_ knew that she was going to say yes to the case… but she could tell Max truly was enjoying herself right now.

Max drew the strawberry along the nape of Chloe’s neck.  The coldness of it made every square inch of Chloe erupt into goosebumps.

“And money _is_ money… Right?”

Chloe and Max looked at each other, a small game of chicken, seeing to see which of them would break first.

“Right,” Chloe said.

Max nodded and made her move.  The warmth of her tongue and the heat of her breath on Chloe’s neck rolled Chloe’s eyes into the back of her head.  Her vision was wreathed in white, and she had to ask herself if she was still breathing… which she wasn’t.

As Chloe let out her breath, Max took the strawberry between her teeth, using her free hand to undo the button and zipper of Chloe’s jeans.  The pants collapsed in a puddle around Chloe’s ankles, revealing a pair of dark gray flannel boxers.

Max got down on her knees and gently lifted Chloe’s shirt above her navel.  She took the strawberry back into her hand and drew the bitten end across Chloe’s skin above the waistline of her boxers.  Chloe let out a thin, whispery yelp as the chill of the strawberry, combined with the ticklishness of her stomach, made the muscles in her abdomen tighten.  The goosebumps came back, and everything that could stand erect on Chloe’s body was doing so now.

Max looked up at Chloe.  “And after all, it’ll get you out of the house… Right?”

“R-Right.”

Max smiled, and licked the thin trail of strawberry juice off of Chloe’s stomach.  The feeling came to Chloe in waves.  She could feel her cheeks flush, feel the microscopic beads of sweat spring forth from the pores of her forehead, feel the light whimper escape her throat.

Chloe looked down at Max.  She hooked an index finger into Chloe’s boxers and looked from the waistband, to the strawberry, to Chloe, _imploring_ her to put two and two together.

“I’ll take the case,” Chloe said.  “It just… seems reasonable when you put it like that.”

 _“Good!”_ Max said.  She stood up, ate the rest of the strawberry, and walked past Chloe into the hallway behind them.

Chloe could not see the exaggerated look of total betrayal on her face.  If she had, she’d have laughed the same as anyone else would have.  She also would have laughed at the strangled _“awwwwww”_ noise she wasn’t aware she was making.  After a moment, Chloe bent over (which was an ordeal in and of itself) to collect her jeans.

She wanted to say something clever.  Something profane.  What Chloe actually came up with was:

_“You fight dirty, Max!”_

The pair of black dress pants that Max had been wearing until moments before flew out of the open bedroom door and hit the wall, before collapsing in a heap on the beige carpet.

Max called from the bedroom: _“Then come in here and do something about it!”_

* * *

While Chloe went in there and did something about it, a collection of events played out in town.  When the true history of Arcadia Bay is recounted by those privileged enough or _cursed_ enough to be in the know, it would be noted that it was these events which would set the tone for the following week.  A week that would be rich in mystery and horror, enchantment and doom…

In the poorer section of town, sixty-eight-year-old Gladys Miller took to letting a room in her house to the occasional tourist that either couldn’t afford the Embassy Suites, or couldn’t abide by the inborn seediness of the Golden Link Motel, which was Arcadia Bay’s other place of commercial lodging.

One such tourist was a twenty-six-year-old man named Michael Francis Luder who was, at this moment, hunched over his laptop in the small bedroom that Gladys Miller was renting to him for a reasonable fee.  He was logged into an amateur satellite tracking site, run by enthusiasts who liked to track the various flotsam that orbits the earth.

Luder smiled.  He seemed to have found what he’d been looking for.

One person who did not have such an outward problem with the Golden Link Motel was twenty-eight-year-old Claire Marshall.  She and her husband Rich were staying in Room 3 of the Golden Link, and Claire was mentally kicking herself for being there at all.

Claire’s parents begged her not to marry Rich, citing his less-than-serious nature and his less-than-average intelligence.  She had waved these things off at the time, only for both his nature and intelligence to reap an ugly whirlwind when the subject of a vacation came up.  While Claire had suggested a stay in Boston (like any reasonable person would do), Rich had put his foot down and said that he wanted to take her to the dumb-fuckiest section of Dumb-Fuck Oregon to hunt Sasquatches.

Claire stood over her sleeping husband, wondering where her life went so wrong that she had to spend precious vacation time hunting mythical creatures, when she heard a commotion outside that made her jump.  It seemed that a raccoon had gotten into one of the trash cans.  Again.

Cursing herself for being put in a position to shoo away woodland vermin (as though she were a member of the goddamn Clampett family), she stormed to the door and opened it, glaring into dark Oregon wilderness outside of her motel room.

It was not a raccoon.

It was roughly five feet tall and covered in hair.  It was humanoid… but only _vaguely_ so.

Claire Marshall was a church-going woman, and the last thought that entered her mind before she fainted dead away was that the God she worshipped seemed to delight in toying with her.

It was at this moment, not too far away, that Officer Fred Spetzky of the Arcadia Bay Police Department caught a call on the police scanner in his cruiser.  Someone called in a wrecked car on the backwoods road he was on.  He turned on the cruiser’s lights, but not the siren.

He found the car a quarter of a mile away, completely totaled, the front wrapped around a tree as though it was a baby panda clutching the leg of its zookeeper.

Officer Spetzky got out of the cruiser, flashlight at the ready, bracing himself for the no-doubt gruesome scene that awaited him in the front seat of the destroyed automobile.

He looked through the shattered driver’s side window… and the more he looked, the less he understood.

Meanwhile, at the Embassy Suites in downtown Arcadia Bay, one floor above where Max Caulfield herself had stayed the previous November, thirty-six-year-old attorney Joseph Thompson prepared his briefcase for his business in town the following morning.  He was handling affairs for a client, and preferred more cosmopolitan settings to the current climes in which he found himself.

Indeed, he had spent days off-and-on in Arcadia Bay, talking to local business owners on behalf of his client, and there was one last name on the list, before he could blow town forever: Joyce Price, owner of the Two Whales Diner.

During all of this, in the woods surrounding Blackwell Academy, something… _ancient_ stirred.

It had been in this place since time immemorial, and it had become well acquainted with—and made its presence felt within—every rock and tree, every failing leaf and grain of soil on this patch of land.

And it knew the name of Chloe Price…


	4. Murder Is My Business

**Chapter 4: Murder Is My Business**

_The rumble from the outside sent dust and stray plaster from the walls._

_Chloe’s arms tightened around Max as the smaller woman’s head nuzzled itself deeper into the taller woman’s shoulder._

_A moment that should have been an age passed before Max looked at Chloe.  The minimal light brought out her blue eyes, the small knot on her forehead, and the thin, pink strip of raw skin around her throat._

_“Chloe,” Max said.  “Are you ready?”_

* * *

_August 26, 2019_

Chloe’s phone on the nightstand started ringing, raising her from a weird dream.  Max had already left the house to teach for the day.

She swung her legs off of the bed, put her glasses on, and looked at the phone.

Trevor Cade.  He was that rare breed: a clean cop in a dirty department.  Thanks to Chloe’s actions getting most of the rest of the ABPD investigated, indicted, or both, Trevor landed a promotion to Sergeant.

Chloe put the phone to her ear.  “Hello?”

“Did I wake you?”

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “What’s up?”

“There’s, uh… there’s something we need you to look at.”

Chloe sighed.  She had become well-acquainted with the malaise from which all small-business owners suffer, in that their friends expect them to ply their trade for free.

“I don’t do free consults,” Chloe said.  “Sorry.  I’ve got to put my foot down somewhere.”

“I thought you’d say that, actually,” Trevor said.  “I have a check for three-hundred dollars waiting for you.  Got it approved by my captain and everything.”

This made Chloe snap to, and sent whatever remained of the weird dream she’d just awoken from to the back of her mind.

“You’re going to pay me to come over there and just _look_ at something?”

“You don’t know what it is we need you to look at yet,” Trevor said.  “I’d say it was weird, but… that would kinda be an understatement.”

* * *

It wasn’t until after Max had taken the roll for first period that she hit a wall of nerves.

The kids sitting at the assorted tables (arranged in much the same way that they had been when she herself had attended Blackwell) didn’t _scare_ her, per se.  It was first period, after all, and the close proximity of the dorms to Blackwell proper meant that some kids had inevitably gotten straight up from bed to attend her class.  Everyone’s brains were still fried, and some were even gently digging into their tear ducts to get the sleep out.

Max stood in front of these kids and felt a fraud.  Not that she didn’t know what she was talking about when it came to photography (indeed, some days that seemed to be the _only_ time she knew what she was talking about), but she felt that she didn’t have that specific brand of teacher’s gravitas.  The nagging doubt which had turned into a preeminent concern was that no matter what she said, or how she said it, her efforts to bring these kids into photography would be doomed to fail, and thus the next true master of the form might be lost, thanks to her dearth of confidence and complete lack of business teaching anyone anything, let alone teaching _this_ class to _these_ kids.

Not to mention that Max Caulfield was a famous photographer, but famous for reasons that might not resonate.  Her most famous work was a picture of the lighthouse up at Koch’s Folly.  It was simply titled _Lighthouse,_ and her agent told her that a print of that picture was hanging up in practically every Holiday Inn in America.  This fact would not impress a room full of hipper-than-thou teenage photography students… though it would have impressed their parents, which, in Max’s eyes, put her even deeper in the hole.

She looked at the kids (who were too tired or preoccupied to look back at her) for a moment in mortal terror, before took a deep breath, vowed to geek out about photography, and hoped some of it stuck.

Max tugged a bit at the white dress shirt that she had tucked into a pair of form-fitting khakis.  “Good morning.”

The kids that weren’t struggling to stay awake looked to Max’s position at the front of the classroom.  She started on the speech she’d been preparing for her first class since February.

“I’m Max Caulfield,” she said, “and I’ll be your photography teacher for the semester.  You made it into an elite private art school, so you’re smart enough to know art is subjective, and as such, you’re going to need to know who’s teaching you photography.  I’m not going to bore you with all the stuff I’ve done, because I figure the best way to know someone is to know what they like.  Engaging in art at all is a deeply personal thing.  So what I’m going to do is tell you about a photographer, show you three of his photographs, and tell you why he and his work resonate with me.  You can make your judgments from there.  Anything before we get started?”

No one said anything.  Max went to the laptop at the front of the class, which was hooked to a projector.  Both the projector and the laptop had rarely been used as, upon hearing that Max was returning to teach, Kate Bradford (formerly Kate Marsh) donated a sizeable sum to Blackwell, to be used strictly for the photography program.  Max’s thank-you email had been effusive in its gratitude.

Max brought up the first picture, which showed on a screen at the rear of the class.  It was of a man with a scrunched-up face and close-cropped hair.  A cigar was sticking out of his mug, and he was holding an old camera in front of him at such a protective angle that one could be forgiven for thinking the man in the photo was using it to ward off evil spirits.

"This,” Max said, “is Arthur Fellig.  He was born in Hungary in 1899.  He emigrated to America when he was ten years old, and grew up to be a photographer.  He started out doing commercials and advertisements until he was in his forties, when he moved to New York to become a press photographer for papers like the _Daily News_ and the _New York_ _Post._ It was there he started working under the name _‘Weegee.’_ Weegee is most known for graphic crime scene photos, none of which Principal Grant will allow me to show you… although if you wanted to look them up on your own after class, I wouldn’t be able to stop you.”

One kid laughed.  Max brought up the next photo.  It was of a man in boxer shirts, holding has pants in one hand, running down the stairs of an apartment building.

“This one’s called _What to Wear,”_ Max said.  “The backstory on this photo is that this guy was shepherding people out of a burning apartment building, saving himself for last.  So not only did this guy save a bunch of lives in his boxer shorts, Weegee himself went into a burning building to take photographs.  Not something a whole lot of people would do.”

Max brought up the second photo, that of two fatigued-looking men coming up the steps from a subway tunnel.  The only thing unusual about them was their mode of dress…

_“Subway Santas,”_ Max said.  “This is the most… _American_ thing I’ve ever seen.  It’s at the crossroads of myth, poverty, and boredom.  In America, even Santa Claus has to make rent.  Now, Weegee was very good at capturing images on the fly.  He worked primarily with a four-by-five Speed Graphic camera, preset at f/16 at one two-hundredths of a second.  Pretty basic stuff for press photographers back in the day.  Bring in all the lights and filters you want to, but this guy lit New York one flashbulb at a time, and always from less than ten feet away.  It’s been revealed since that Weegee staged some of his shots, and it’s been debated whether _Subway Santas_ was staged itself.  But if the image is this good, I’m not going to argue with his methods.”

Max took a deep breath.  “And I’ve saved the best… or _worst…_ for last.”

She revealed the third photo.  An old woman standing next to a fire truck, clutching a shawl beneath her face as her daughter takes her in her arms.  Both of the women’s faces are masks of wailing tragedy.

“The title says it all,” Max said.  _“Mrs. Henrietta Torres and her Daughter_ _Ada_ _Watch as Another Daughter and her Son Die in Fire.”_

Max scanned the faces of her students, and all were spellbound by this picture, save one: a skinny girl with short brown hair and piercing green eyes that Max recalled from taking roll as being named Lorraine Foster.  She was staring at Max, for some strange reason.

Max looked from Lorraine to the photo on the screen.  She decided to deviate from her prepared remarks.

“Y’know,” Max said.  “I had a bunch of things to say about lighting and shadow for this photo, but nothing I can say can add or subtract form this photo at all.”

She stared at the photo with her students for another moment before she brought up all three photos side by side.

“Name the one thing you don’t see in these photos,” Max said.

A redheaded boy in the back named Payton Mills appraised the three black-and-white photos and said “Color?”

No one laughed.

“Condescension,” Max said.  “When you set out in the world to take pictures for a living, a lot of you, maybe even some of the best of you, will look at your subjects like exhibits in a zoo.  Or uncooperative toddlers.  Trying to frame a moment to your liking and resenting them when that moment sometimes doesn’t go your way.  Not knowing that trying too hard to make something happen, or trying too hard to separate yourself from it makes the photo more about _you_ than the image you’re trying to capture.  Weegee rarely, if ever, did that.  He gave an honest damn about everyone he ever took a picture of, staged or no, perfect composition or no.  He knew that… that _feeling_ something can make it last forever.”

Max broke from her rhapsody and looked at her students.  Every last one of them was hanging on her every word.  The thought that popped into her head was every last bit as serious as it was funny:

It had taken her twenty-three years, but high school kids _finally_ thought Max Caulfield was cool.  Or at least as cool as she _could_ be without getting shot.

The only one who wasn’t looking at Max with rapt attention was Lorraine Foster.  Her face was… impassive.  As though her admiration or lack thereof was too beneath her to even register a change of expression.

Max tore her eyes from Lorraine to look at the rest of the class as she turned the laptop off.

“Alright,” Max said.  “Some of you are new to photography.  Welcome.  I hope you have fun, and maybe you’ll find a new life’s calling.  Who knows?  But some of you _aren’t_ new to photography, judging from those portfolios I see.  To those of you who have them, take a few minutes to find one picture—just _one—_ that you want to share with the rest of the class.”

The kids with portfolios started rooting through them, obsessively hunting for their one photo while the kids who didn’t have portfolios quietly checked their phones.  Max sat down at the desk (comfy rolling chair _also_ courtesy of Kate Bradford) and produced a notebook from a lower drawer in the desk.

Max began to write down the names of all of her female students…

* * *

The Taxi weaved its way down one of the unincorporated, unnamed roads that surrounded Arcadia Bay.  Chloe wasn’t sure where the jurisdiction of the ABPD ended and where the jurisdiction of the Highway Patrol or the County Sheriff began, but this had to be pushing it.

Trevor told her over the phone to look for the fork in the woods, and that the road on the left would be blocked off by police tape.  It took her a little longer to find it than she’d have liked, but she pulled The taxi over to the dirt shoulder under a canopy of trees, checked her beanie for lint in the rear view mirror, and went to meet the officer standing near the strip of yellow tape cordoning off the road.

“You Chloe Price?” the officer asked.

“Yeah.”

“This is for you,” the officer said, and handed over the three-hundred dollar consulting check.

Already this was weird.  Chloe had entered into some correspondence with other private detectives, all of whom had said that police were more hesitant to part with consulting money than dogs were to part with bones.  And now, here she was, not only unaware of what she was going to see, but being paid _upfront_ before she had even seen it.

And to make matters a little more off-putting, here came Trevor in his snappy uniform to greet her.

“Good morning, Chloe.”

“What up, Sarge.  How’s Dana?”

Trevor smiled like he hadn’t in a while.  “Still on maternity leave,” he said.  “Brandon’s a handful.”

“Well, congratulations to the Cade family,” Chloe said.  “Hate to be the one to say _‘Let’s get down to business,’_ but, uh…”

Trevor’s face fell.  “Of course.”

“What am I supposed to be looking at?”

Trevor turned around and pointed to a bend in the road.

“See that curve?” Trevor asked.  “Follow it, and you’ll see a car wrapped around a tree.  Look it over, and tell me if it seems… _unusual_ to you.”

Chloe looked Trevor over a bit before shrugging her shoulders.  “It’s your money.”

Chloe walked under the tape and scratched her forehead underneath her beanie before walking down the road and around the bend.

A white 2015 Hyundai was currently in the process of giving a tight bear hug to an oak tree.  The pitted brown earth around the car was host to a blue galaxy of what remained of the car’s windshield and all four side windows.  Only the rear window escaped the crash unscathed.

Chloe walked to the rear of the car, scoping out the plate.  It was an Oregon tag: **_BTRCLSL._**

She worked her way around, trying to watch her step before she came to the passenger door of the totaled car.  She bent over, careful not to touch anything, and looked in through the busted passenger window.

Even more particles of the windshield covered the front interior.  It only took a moment for two things to pop out at her.

The first, and less troublesome of said two things was that all four doors of the car were locked.  But Chloe (or anyone for that matter) couldn’t be blamed for overlooking such a strange thing because an even stranger thing had made itself known:

The driver’s side seatbelt was still buckled, and limply pressing against the cheap upholstery.

Chloe straightened herself, eyebrows upturned in disbelief, to see Trevor standing on the road, arms folded.

She thought to call to him, but given the oddity she was in, she didn’t want to be loud about it.  She went back around the car to join him.

“Have you run the plate?” Chloe asked.  “See who this car belongs to?”

“We called it in,” Trevor said, “but the computers are down at the station right now.  We have our IT guy working on it.”

“Have you checked the glove box for the registration?”

Trevor sighed in frustration, but Chloe could tell it was more with himself than anything or anyone else.

“Look,” Trevor said.  “If you asked me to eyeball it, I’d say that car was going sixty when it crashed.  Now we checked the road for two miles back.  No blood on the pavement that says the driver bailed, and no skid-marks to show that the car slowed down.  Combine those with the locked doors and the buckled seatbelt, and one of two things must have happened: Either that car drove _itself_ into that tree, or…”

“Or?” Chloe asked.  She knew what he was going to say, but she wanted to hear him say it and confirm her own conclusion.

“Or,” Trevor said, “there _was_ someone driving that car, and they just… _vanished.”_

A chill went up Chloe’s back.

“We haven’t checked the glove box,” Trevor said.  “I know we’re cops and all, but… if I said we were all a little too scared to _touch_ that damn car, could you really blame us?”

Chloe could tell that Trevor was almost wholly unacquainted with the weirdness that came part and parcel with Arcadia Bay.  She fought off an urge to take his hand and say _“Oh, you sweet Child of Summer.”_

What she did instead was take off her beanie.  “I’ll be right back,” she said.

She retraced her steps to the passenger door and put her beanie over her hand like a loose mitten, she reached in and opened the glove box, which flopped open unceremoniously.  The only two things inside were a AAA card and a small State Farm envelope containing insurance information.

“Paul Sefton,” Chloe said as she handed the enveloped to Trevor.

“Thanks, Chloe,” Trevor said.  “And if anyone asks, could you tell them I got it?”

Chloe smiled.  “Sure,” she said as she looked back at the wrecked car.  “And keep me posted.  To say that this is interesting would be putting it kinda lightly.”

* * *

The Taxi was the third car in line at Arcadia Bay’s only Wells Fargo. Chloe thought she’d use this time to make a call.

“Chloe,” Victoria said.

“Hey, Victoria.”

“Might I ask why you’re spoiling a perfectly good Monday afternoon?”

Chloe shifted in The Taxi’s driver’s seat.  “After some… _thought,_ I’ve decided to take your case.”

She thought she could a small laugh escape Victoria’s nose over the phone.  “How does it feel?” Victoria asked.

“How does what feel?”

“Being so whipped by someone that you’ll violate your principles?”

Chloe had a couple of swords to say to Victoria about that (and no points for guessing that one of those words began with the letter F), but she stopped herself.  In the split-second before she told Victoria the truth, Chloe thought she could smell strawberries.

“It feels _really good_ , actually.”

A sigh was audible on the other end of the line.  “I will _never_ understand _anyone’s_ attraction to that girl.”

Chloe smiled.  “Well, that’s the pot calling the kettle a motherfucker, isn’t it Missus Graham?”

Another sigh.  “Tell me when you find something out,” Victoria said.  Then she hung up.  Chloe couldn’t stop herself from laughing.

After she had deposited the police check, Chloe made for her new home at Blackwell.  She immediately made for Max’s laptop (which bore a bumper-sticker that said _“Photographers Do It With Focus”_ ) and looked up the Cyrus Haverford Memorial Mental Health Facility.

Unlike most places that housed criminals unfit to stand trial, Haverford was privately run.  In accordance with the marginally successful plea deal that the Prescott legal team had struck, Nathan was sent to Haverford.  Privately run institutions thrive on individual donors, of which Haverford had many.  Haverford Asylum’s website, however, provided a list of donors that wished to make themselves public.  Of course there were some who didn’t, among whose shady number Nathan’s father Sean might have (illegally) included himself or his company.

But for now, Chloe looked up the donors individually.  Some of them lived in Arcadia Bay.  Chloe wrote those names down.  Maybe she could use her local celebrity status or her in with Mayor Newman (who had texted her the day before, welcoming her back to town) to lean on them and get information about what could be going down with Nathan at Haverford.  It was a long shot, but it was better than nothing.

This is what Chloe was doing when Max got home at five.

“Hey,” Max said as she dropped her satchel by the door and kicked her shoes off.

“Hey yourself,” Chloe said.  She opened and closed her hand rapidly in a _gimme-gimme_ gesture.

Max came over to the couch and kissed Chloe, taking the blonde’s cheek in her hand.  When the kiss was broken, Max plopped down on the couch next to her girlfriend.

“How was your day?” Max asked.

“Eventful,” Chloe said.  “Took the Nathan case.  And I made three-hundred bucks.”

“How’d you do that?”

Chloe told her about the car.

“ _Wow_ ser,” Max said.  “That’s… I mean, I know _‘weird’_ is an understatement, but…”

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “Come to Arcadia Bay.  We have time-travel, Sasquatches and cars that drive themselves.  Anyway, how was your day?”

“Not nearly as eventful,” Max said.  “It’s just the first day, so there’s nothing for me to grade… Which means I have the night free.”

“Do you, now?”

“Yup,” Max said.  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“You’re using peaches tonight?”

Max lightly kicked her girlfriend’s shin.  “You shush,” Max said.  “I want to watch a movie.”

“Then a movie we shall watch.”

“Cool,” Max said.  “Just let me get a flash drive out of the bedroom.”

Which she did.  She plugged it into the laptop on the coffee table, and Max brought up the movie she wanted to watch.

It was called _The Public Eye_ , and it had Joe Pesci in it as this old-timey photographer who gets caught up in a mystery during World War II.  It was at the hour mark that Chloe felt she had to say something.

“I gotta say,” Chloe said.  This doesn’t strike me as a ‘Max’ movie.”

Max snuggled next to Chloe.  “The guy Joe Pesci’s playing is based on a real photographer.”

“Anyone I’ve heard of?” Chloe asked.

“Weegee.”

Chloe squinted.  “You mean like the _board?”_

Max grinned.  “Something like that.”

She leaned over and paused the movie before getting up.  “I’m gonna make some popcorn,” Max said.

Max had almost made it out of the living room.

“Why are we watching this on a flash drive?” Chloe asked.  “Didn’t you bring your Blu-Rays with you?”

Max turned around.  “This movie isn’t on Blu-Ray,” Max said.  “Which is bullshit.  Even _Manos: The Hands o—“_

The bang was deafening.  So loud that it muted the breaking window.

Max’s forehead just…wasn’t there anymore.  A curtain of blood ran down over her blue eyes.  Her jaw was slack.  Her hands were open wide.  Her knees were wobbling.

Max was dead.  And her body was just now getting used to the idea.

_“Max!”_

Launching herself out of her chair and covering the few feet to Max was, to Chloe, like trying to run through molasses.  Max had dropped to her knees, her head hanging limply down over her chest.

Chloe reached out, hoping something, _anything_ would end this nightmare.  As though reaching out could…

**_Booommm…_ **

Everything in Chloe’s field of vision shimmered and distorted.  As though each object in the room was trying to display two different angles of itself at once.  The shards of glass from the broken window leapt off of the floor to rejoin its once whole edifice upon the sill. The claret started running up from the floor and back to Max’s demolished visage.  Max rose from her kneeling position by the tips of her toes.

Chloe didn’t need to be told what was happening.

The possibilities were too wonderful and terrifying to contemplate.

Chloe Price was rewinding time.


	5. The Girl who Broke the World

**Chapter 5: The Girl who Broke the World**

Max had almost made it out of the living room.

“Why are we watching this on a flash drive,” Chloe asked.  “Didn’t you bring your Blu-Rays with you?”

Max turned around.  “This movie isn’t on Blu-Ray,” she said.  “Which is bullshit.  Even _Manos: The—“_

If Max Caulfield had had time to reflect on this moment within the moment itself, she would have thought she had imagined it, or perhaps had gotten so caught in her reverie on the subject of the intrinsic unfairness of home video releases that she had missed something in the world around her.

For in one instant, she would have seen Chloe at rest on the couch, listening to Max answer a question.  In the very next instant, however, Chloe had tackled Max to the ground, in a maneuver professional wrestling aficionados would have correctly identified as a _“Spear.”_ Somehow Max had missed Chloe getting up and closing the six feet between them.

On her way down, Max heard both a loud bang and the shattering of glass, and shortly after her head bounced off the carpeted floor, she heard footsteps from outside, running away and getting softer.

“Chloe?” Max said. “You can get off me now.”

Chloe wordlessly rose from above Max, shedding broken window glass from her back.  Max sat up and looked around.

The bullet hole on the wall to her right (roughly five-and-a-half feet from the ground, which would have been a near perfect headshot) was, in hindsight, only the second most disturbing thing Max saw that night.  Just as Max was beginning to process the fact that someone had tried to shoot her, Chloe had taken Max’s face in both hands and turned it towards her.

The look in Chloe’s eyes was that of horror, and she seemed to have her hands on Max’s face not to ensure that she was safe, but to ensure that she was there at all.  In the dimness of the living room, Max could see a sheen of sweat form on Chloe’s forehead.

This wasn’t the Chloe Max knew, or at least not the Chloe she had known since she was nineteen.  Chloe, in the world that had been a few short seconds ago, would have asked Max if she was okay.  Would have told Max to call the police while she went outside to catch the person who did this, or at least investigate the scene.

But _this_ Chloe?  This Chloe took her shaking hands away from Max’s face and wiped away the panicked tears that were threatening to spill from her own eyes.  She backed into the wall by the shattered window as though she was trying to disappear into it.  She was breathing as though in the midst of a marathon.

Max didn’t know what to say to this Chloe.  The dumbest option was the only one with the guts to raise its hand.

“Chloe?  Are you okay?”

* * *

Ten minutes after Max called the cops, Sergeant Trevor Cade and two of his fellow officers (Officers Jean Ramirez and Reginald Ferris) arrived, setting up a yellow tape barricade around the house to keep out the small crowd of students from the Bradford Dormitory who had heard the shot.

Not five minutes after that, while Max was telling Trevor what had happened as Chloe leaned against the wall, Principal Michelle Grant made her way past the barricade that Officer Ferris was maintaining.  She zoned in on Max immediately and marched over to her, seemingly oblivious to the other two people in the room.

The bear-hug that Max had to endure from Principal Grant was so intense that she could have sworn she felt a vertebrae or two in her back pop.

“I’m _so_ glad you’re okay,” Principal Grant said.  “All you need do is say the word, and I’ll make the call to cancel classes tomorrow.”

“No,” Max said.  “I’m not dead.  I’m not even injured.  I appreciate your concern, but I just don’t really see the point.”

The only other person in the room who didn’t seem surprised by this was Principal Grant herself, who widened her eyes, but seemed pleased behind it.

This was something Trevor picked up on.

_“Please_ tell me you didn’t make your way past my barricade to cover your own ass.”

Principal Grant brandished the same death glare that she used on her students against a Sergeant in the ABPD.  It worked.

“The welfare of my teachers, my students, and my school are all connected.  If you’d gotten higher than a D in my class, Trevor, then you’d know what the word _‘symbiosis’_ means.”

Trevor tried to maintain his composure after being straight-up bodied, and Principal Grant turned her attention back to Max.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” Max said.  “No, Principal Grant, I’m fine, all things considered.  Just a little shaken up.”

What Principal Grant may or may not have said in reply to Max’s statement was forever lost to time by the arrival of the evening’s next uninvited guest.

Mayor Seth Newman was, at all of the times Max had seen him, the textbook definition of the word _“jovial.”_ He was a heavy man, with a widow’s peak that ascended to his scalp in sandy curls.  He had small, wet, blue eyes and a pouting mouth in the middle of two permanently puffy cheeks.  The one time she head heard him laugh (she and Chloe had been visiting the mayor’s office at the time), she had felt the shock wave in the carpet beneath her feet.  He was the kind of man who actually meant it when he told you to _“Have a good day.”_

She had never seen him angry before, and Max would have wagered that she was seeing him angry now.  His usually ruddy face was two shades redder than usual as he came through the door, and his eyes were squinting as though the room were smoky.  He didn’t look mean.  He looked like a ten-year-old _trying_ to look mean and failing.

He spared but a single nod to Chloe (who didn’t seem to notice him), and ignored Principal Grant entirely as he walked straight to Trevor.  Trevor looked like he was about to instinctively back up before he stopped himself.

“Sergeant _Cade?”_ Mayor Newman asked. 

Trevor nodded.

“You’re not one of the newbies, are you?  You’re local.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which means you’re clean.”

Trevor nodded again.

“Good,” Mayor Newman said.  “From now on, this is your number one priority.  If you find something out, myself and Miss Price will know immediately after, won’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” Trevor said.  “Yes, you will.”

“Ex _cuse_ me,” Principal Grant said.  Mayor Newman turned and glared at her.

Max looked at the two of them.  Both Principal Grant and Mayor Newman were at odds after Max was shot six years ago.  Mayor Newman insisted on taking up David Madsen’s initiative of installing security cameras at Blackwell.  Mayor Newman’s plan was dealt a mortal blow when he asked Max herself to publicly endorse the idea, which she refused to do.  In fact, Max told Mayor Newman that she would publicly _condemn_ the installation of cameras, and she would use the words _"Fourth Amendment"_ as often as she could.  To his credit, he had spared Max any of his ire, reserving it all for the then-interim principal.  It seemed to Max that the grudge was still going strong.

Principal Grant pointed at Chloe.  _“She’s_ in the loop on this investigation and I’m not?”

Chloe was off in her own little world.  She didn’t seem to hear her.

“No offense to Sergeant Cade, here,” Mayor Newman said, “but people in this town still don’t trust the police.  Chloe can get to places they can’t.  And why the hell _should_ you be in the loop on this?”

“This is my school.”

Mayor Newman pointed at the shattered window.  “And I _love_ what you’ve done with the place.”

He looked at Max.  “Miss Caulfield, I would personally like to apologize for this.  Both you and Kate Bradford helped put Arcadia Bay on the map, and I think I can speak for the entire town when I say we’re all very proud of you, and grateful you decided to return.  And I _know_ I can speak for myself when I say that I will not rest until I find the person or persons responsible.”

Max opened her mouth to thank him, but Mayor Newman had already turned around and begun his exit from the house.  Principal Grant followed hot on his heels, calling “Mayor Newman?  Mayor _Newman!”_

Trevor sighed and looked at Chloe.

“Welcome back.”

* * *

 

Chloe snapped out of her haze long enough to listen to the assembled officers discuss their findings.

Officers Ramirez and Ferris were unable to find any evidence outside.  The would-be assassin had stood on the concrete path outside the window, which meant no footprints.  The only thing Officer Ramirez was able to offer in terms of something workable was that the gun used was most likely a revolver, as she could not find a shell casing.

Trevor removed the bullet from the wall as evidence, and was even nice enough to help sweep up the broken glass and use bits of the moving boxes and some duct tape to shore up the broken window.

Evidence baggie in hand, Trevor bid Chloe and Max a goodnight, telling them that Officer Ferris would be knocking on doors in the Bradford Dormitory while Officer Ramirez would bring a cruiser up to the dorm for an all-night security detail.  Max thanked him, and he left.

As soon as the door shut, Max immediately rounded on Chloe.

“Chloe,” Max said.  “I just got shot at.  Why am I the one who’s asking _you_ what’s wrong?”

Chloe looked down at her hands, which were shaking.  Talking was one of her gifts, and it had completely failed her.  How could she tell Max what happened?  Living in Seattle those few months, Chloe talked herself into believing that the Happily Ever After that had seemed so unattainable for so long had finally happened.  She had suffered, and suffered, and suffered, and whatever force that meted out fates and destinies had finally deigned to smile upon her after taking joy in defeating her since before she was a teenager.

And now this.  Back in Arcadia Bay.  Back in danger.  _Again._

“Hey,” Max said.  “I’m here.  It’s okay.”

“It’s _not_ okay!” Chloe said.  Her eyes were burning again.  “I… I watched you die…”

Chloe apparently had nothing to fear.  No internal struggle over whether or not Max would believe her was necessary.  She squinted and tilted her head, as though she was trying to manually reassemble something she had misheard in her head.  Then her eyes widened, and she went pale.

“You… You rewound time…”

It wasn’t a question.  Tears started streaming down Chloe’s cheeks.  Max wrapped her arms around her and held her tight.

Max brought her hands up and took Chloe’s cheeks, positioning her head and looking her in the eye.

“You know what this brings, right?”

Chloe nodded.  Max wiped her eyes as well.

“I need you to promise me,” Max said.  “Don’t use your power.  Not for anything.”

“I can’t make that promise,” Chloe said.

“You _have_ to.”

“Someone’s trying to _kill_ you, Max.  If the roles were reversed, then you wouldn’t.  The roles _were_ reversed, and you _didn’t!”_

“Chloe,” Max said.  “A _storm_ is coming.  I almost died so I wouldn’t have to choose between this town and the woman I love, and I don’t want that to happen to you!  Just… Look, let’s just go to sleep, okay?  It’s been a horrible night, and I think both of us need to be held right now.”

* * *

Chloe couldn’t sleep.

She saw the digital clock on the nightstand roll around to twelve AM.  At the moment, sleep was the picture on the box that a computer chair came in, and right now all she had were the individually wrapped parts that she had to assemble herself. 

Chloe leaned over, kissed the starfish-shaped exit scar on Max’s back, and got out of bed to begin a silent hunt for clothes.

Clad in a plain black t-shirt, sweatpants and a pair of sneakers (she didn’t bother putting on socks), Chloe sat on the small stoop outside the house.  The small lamp near the sidewalk provided all the light she needed.  She looked to her left, to the stretch of concrete that joined the sidewalk to the stairs leading to the school, and saw Officer Ramirez’s cruiser parked there, Ramirez at the wheel, keeping a look out.  She looked to the right and saw the empty courtyard in front of the Bradford Dormitory.

She patted the pocket of her sweatpants for her pack of smokes… only to remember that she quit.  Christ knew she could have used one.

_Maybe I could buy a pack,_ Chloe thought.  _Extenuating circumstances being what they are, I don’t think Max would mind._

_“Psssst.”_

It came from around the corner to her right.  She looked at the cruiser and waved hi to Officer Ramirez.

She waved back.

Chloe thanked God the cops were here… and immediately felt dirty.

She got up and crept around to the side of the house.

A female student who couldn’t have been over five-one was standing there.  She had a short thatch of dyed blonde hair sticking straight up.  She was wearing plaid pants and a white t-shirt with a black rose on it.

“What?” Chloe asked.

The female student looked around before she asked “Are you holding?”

_Say… That reminds me…_

“Are _you?”_ Chloe asked.

The female student rubbed her face, her expression disappointment commingling with anger.

“This is some _bull_ shit is what _this_ is,” she said, and then she walked away.

Chloe turned around to go back to her spot on the porch when two things happened in rapid succession.

The first was that she almost ran over Officer Ramirez, who was standing right behind her.  Chloe managed to stop herself from bumping into her, and she was very self-conscious about how goofy she looked when she did so.

The second was that a great bloom of _light_ came from the forest beyond the sidewalk.  So bright was it that it stopped Chloe from apologizing to the officer of the law that she had almost run into.  The prospect that the light was somehow man-made, the result of some business going on in the woods surrounding Blackwell was impossible to Chloe.  She could tell the difference between a spotlight that could provide that much illumination and actual _sunlight._

This was natural.

This was… _warm._

“Is everything okay?” Officer Ramirez asked.

Chloe scanned her face, which was genuinely curious, and oblivious to anything but her.  She turned around and saw the female student walking back to the dorm, her stride apparently unbroken.

A thought came to Chloe, so horrifying that it _had_ to be true.  Not only was she the only one who had seen a vast blaze of natural light come from the woods… but maybe she was the only one who was able to see it.

“I’m fine,” Chloe said after a bit.  “I’m, uh… I’m gonna take a little walk in the woods.  Is—Is that okay?”

Officer Ramirez fetched a heavy sigh.  “I’d advise against it.”

“Uh-huh,” Chloe said.  “Are you gonna _stop_ me?”

“I suppose not,” Officer Ramirez said.  “You’re not a suspect or anything.  Just don’t take too long, okay?  I like this job, and I’ll lose it if something happens to you.”

“Deal,” Chloe said.  “Back in a few.”

Officer Ramirez nodded.  Chloe walked past the sidewalk and on to the hill where the forest began.  She knew Max was safe because, for some reason, she knew that the light wouldn’t have appeared to her, _called_ to her, if there was any danger.

She just… _knew_ , somehow.


	6. GO DUCKS!

**Chapter 6: GO DUCKS!**

Chloe had gotten far enough away from the lights in and around the Bradford Dormitory that she had to squint to see where she was going as she came into the woods.  And as clouds shadowed the quarter-moon above Arcadia Bay, Chloe was plunged into near total darkness.

And yet, even had she had her eyes closed, Chloe would have known where she was going.  Would have known of every jutting rock, every dip in the earth, every tree with branches reaching out for her like long, skinny hands.  The light _was_ for her.  _Only_ for her.  It didn’t call her or compel her to its heart in these woods, but led her by the hand like a patient parent trying to aid a child’s first independent steps.

The light flashed again, bright, and massive, and blinding.  Yet Chloe felt no pain from it as she neared the forest’s heart.  Her pupils didn’t even dilate.

Chloe found a clearing in the oppressively dark night, and the light bloomed again, the brightest it had been yet.  But Chloe found that she could easily look into its center without damaging her eyes. The light receded to the center of the clearing, drawing back into the thing from which it came.

Into the _person_ from which it came.

As the light went out, the clouds drew away from the moon, giving Chloe a look at with whom she was sharing the forest.

It was the little girl from the cemetery yesterday.

This little eight-year-old folded her arms over the front of her Oregon Ducks jersey and absent-mindedly kicked the dirt at her feet while she stared at Chloe and smiled, her bright teeth complimenting with her dark skin.

Formless words bubbled up in Chloe’s mind, and she didn’t know which ones to use.  She knew her inability to say anything was showing on her face, bringing her eyebrows up her forehead and turning her mouth into an “O,” but given the wonder and absurdity of present events, this was a situation that she was powerless to do anything about.

The little girl sighed.  “By the sea,” she said, “a girl will break the world.  She will go back when others go forward, and she will pass through portals unseen.  She will tear the sky.  She will sunder the waves.  She will bring the wind to shore beneath a fiery, watchful eye.”

Chloe shivered at hearing The Myth of the Traveler as the little girl stepped toward her.

“Looks like you’re the one who drew the short straw this time,” the little girl said.  She took Chloe’s limp hand into her own and shook it. 

“I gotta tell you, Chloe.  I’m a _big_ fan.”

As the little girl dropped her hand, Chloe’s words slowly became unstuck.

“Are you some kind of, uh, Ind… uh… _Native American_ … Spirit or something?”

The little girl tilted her head.  “No.”

“Then… why are you…”

“Why am I dressed like this?” The little girl asked.  She looked down at herself.  “I must have met this girl… Two-hundred?  Two-hundred and _fifty_ years ago?  I liked her.  She had gumption.  I like _you.  You_ have gumption.  And in the _very_ unlikely event that Arcadia Bay is even a thing in two-hundred and fifty years, I just might be dressing up like Chloe Price.  If I opt to make an appearance, of course.”

Chloe sized the little girl up.  “Really?  Was the two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old Native American girl a Ducks fan?”

The little girl looked at Chloe as though she had tripped on the stairs as she went up to accept an Oscar.  “Well, gee, Chloe, I don’t know.  Maybe if she knew how good their offensive line was this year, she might be.  Or I could have my _own_ interests.  That’s an option, too.”

“You do realize it’s kind of in poor taste to dress like that,” Chloe said.  “It’s… y’know… _racist…”_

The little girl looked confused.  “It’s not racist when I do it.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s racist when _anyone_ does it.”

“It’s not racist because I was here _before_ they were.  You can’t appropriate in reverse.  Not unless you’re willing to go after every Native American who wears a cowboy hat.”

“You were in Oregon before the Native Americans?”

“I was on _Earth_ before _humanity,”_ the little girl said.  “You know what?  I take it back.  I _did_ like you, but that was before you opened your mouth, you annoying little shit-ass!  So I’m gonna stand here in silence until I hear something come out of you that warrants a response.”

The little girl folded her arms again and looked at the tree next to her.  Chloe took this moment to settle with the fact that her life had been weird enough these past few years to immediately accept that she was talking to someone or some _thing_ beyond the realm of her understanding.  The ship that had all the rational explanations on it had sailed a _long_ fucking time ago.

“What do I call you?” Chloe asked.

The little girl looked back at Chloe.  “Do you have to call me _anything?”_

“Yeah, I do,” Chloe said.  “I keep thinking of you as _‘little girl,’_ and being as you’re apparently an immortal with the sun _literally_ shining out of her ass, you’re not little, and you’re not a girl either.”

The little girl put her hands in the pockets of her jeans.  “To tell you the truth, it’s been so long since anyone’s asked me that question, I may have just forgotten.”

She looked toward the night sky with her eyes scrunched up, as though she was shuffling through all the possible responses to Chloe’s question.

“You… may call meeeeee… _Tobanga.”_

Chloe blinked a couple of times.  “Tobanga?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not the first time I’ve used that name,” Tobanga said.

“Like the totem pole?” Chloe asked.

“Oh, that’s _right,”_ Tobanga said.  “That’s _mine,_ isn’t it?  Well, I’ve been a great many things to a great many people, so it’s kind of apt, really.”

Chloe sighed.  Moses was lucky enough to get a burning bush when some kind of deity wanted to talk to him, but Chloe was just unlucky enough to get an eight-year-old girl who acted like she was Conan O’Brien.

“Why did you call me out here?” Chloe asked.

“To point the way,” Tobanga said.

“What does that even _mean?”_

Tobanga held her hands behind her back and looked up at Chloe.  “There comes a time in  _every_ young lady’s life when she gets powers over time and space.  I try to help.  Not enough to change the outcome of anything, but just enough to make sure the whole thing’s fair.”

Chloe looked down her nose.  “Is this something you _have_ to do?  Is that why you’re here?”

“What?” Tobanga asked.  “No.  I don’t have to do shit.  I just do this for fun.”

“For fun?”

Tobanga nodded.

“Did you do this shit to Jennifer Healy for fun?  To Max?”

“I didn’t have time to do this for Jennifer,” Tobanga said.  “She used the photo jump one time before Denise Leonard kidnapped her.  As for Max… She’s not as _literal_ as you are.”

“Gee thanks,” Chloe said.  “But I don’t need your help.  I’m not using my power again.  I know what happens when someone does.”

Tobanga put her hands on her hips and cocked her head, looking like an astrophysicist being told how stars work by a very confident, very dim-witted sixth-grader.

“Is that so?” Tobanga asked.

Seeing the look on her face made Chloe second-guess herself.  “Um… _Yes?”_

Tobanga grinned, the condescension so pronounced that she would have had stink-lines coming off of her in an artist’s rendering.

“Did you know,” Tobanga asked, “that it’s possible for a rubber band to be stretched so far that one only needs to blow on it to snap it?”

There was a silence.  Apparently, this question was not rhetorical.

“No,” Chloe said.  “I didn’t.”

“It’s true,” Tobanga said.  “Even tried it one time.  And that’s the point we’re at now.  This storm has been in the prophecies of countless cultures for time beyond measure.  And it’s been trying to happen for six years, now.  It’s not going to wait much longer, no matter what you do.”

“So… you’re saying using my powers won’t make it worse?”

“No,” Tobanga said.  “I’m saying that _not_ using your powers won’t make it _better._ There’s a difference.”

Chloe stood with that thought for a few moments as a sad iciness spread throughout her body.

“It’s… It’s fate, isn’t it?”

Tobanga folded her arms.  “Fate?”

“I was supposed to die in that bathroom,” Chloe said.  “I… I started this.”

Tobanga rolled her eyes again.

“Chloe?”

“What?”

Tobanga reached down to the soil beneath her feet and picked up a rock the size of a computer mouse.

“Think fast,” Tobanga said, and whipped the rock at Chloe’s head.

**_Booommm…_ **

Time stopped with out Chloe willing it to do so.  The world shimmered, as did the rock that was hovering in mid-air mere inches from her face.  Chloe could feel a great… _uncoiling_ within her mind.  As though a long, spiraling fuse had been lit, the flame burning it clockwise into nothingness.

All was still… except for Tobanga, who was walking toward her.

“Nifty, huh?”  Tobanga asked.  “Every Traveler gets that.  The storm needs the Traveler alive, so their powers come with a built-in failsafe.  So long as you’re conscious, anyway.”

Tobanga reached up and plucked the rock from the air.  Now that Chloe was out of danger, time began its linear progression once again.

A small cluster of a headache was beginning to form in Chloe’s skull.

“Was there a point to that?” Chloe asked.

“Sure there was,” said Tobanga.  “If fate had such a raging hatred for you, then why did it decide, tonight, to make you the safest woman in Arcadia Bay?  If I seem to recall correctly, you got your memories back from all the other timelines you were in, right?”

“Yeah,” Chloe said.

“So you remember the storm from six years ago.”

She and Max at Koch’s Folly.  A lighthouse above them, black water below, and a storm in the distance.  A kiss at the end of the world.

“Yeah, I do,” Chloe said.

“You know the one thing about that storm you may not have noticed?”

“What’s that?”

“The fact that it’s a _fucking storm!”_ Tobanga said, letting some anger seep into her face.  “Yeah, it’s mystical, it’s been foretold for a few thousand years now, but it’s still a _storm._ It’s a weather pattern.  It gives as much of a shit about Max Caulfield, or Jennifer Healy, or _you_ as a forest fire does about the wind that spreads it.  It’s cute that you think the world revolves around you and your girlfriend.  I hate to be the one to tell you that’s not true.”

Chloe put her hands in the pockets of her sweatpants.  She clenched her eyes shut until her headache went away.

“So,” Chloe said.  “What are my options?”

Tobanga rubbed the side of her nose.  “There’s always the Max Caulfield option.  You can cheat.  You can jump through a photo, make sure you never get your powers, and when time realigns itself with the actions you made, everything will be right as rain.  But then again, Max can tell you how hazardous altering the past can be.”

She turned around, showing her back to Chloe as she started to saunter away.  “Then there’s the Jennifer Healy option.  Just… split town.  Because while the storm needs the Traveler alive, it also needs the Traveler in Arcadia Bay.  But both of these options have one major drawback.”

Chloe raised her eyebrows.  “Which is?”

“You know what it is,” Tobanga said.  “I want to hear you say it.”

Chloe took a deep breath.  “It’ll only be a matter of time before another Traveler pops up.”

“And the whole damn thing starts all over again,” Tobanga said.  “And they’ll have no idea what they’re dealing with.”

The two of them stood in silence for a while.  Tobanga turned around and scanned Chloe’s face.

“There is, however, a third option,” Tobanga said.

Chloe looked up.  “There is?”

“Yeah,” Tobanga said.  “And I know, no matter what I say, you’ll take it.”

“So you can see the future?” Chloe asked.  “What am I saying?  Of _course_ you can.”

“I can’t actually,” Tobanga said.  “But… remember Rachel Amber?”

Chloe’s entire inner landscape darkened.  “Don’t,” Chloe said.  “I’m not in the fucking mood.”

“I knew her,” Tobanga said.  “She didn’t know me, but still.  She was a _wonderful_ girl.  She had a lot of love to give, and _you_ had a lot of love to give _her._ And I get it.  She was kind… and beautiful… and, well, _straight,_ but you didn’t hold that against her, so I don’t see why I should.  You worshipped her.  And she _died.”_

Chloe’s hands closed into fists that were already beginning to shake with rage.

Tobanga continued.  “But in the timeline next door, you never met Rachel.  The time the two of you spent together over here, you spent in a wheelchair over there.  And over there, she died anyway.  All that love and you couldn’t save her.  Replace it with nothing and it _still_ didn’t save her.”

Chloe’s teeth ground against each other.  “You’re saying I had no effect on her life at all?”

“Of course not,” Tobanga said.  “You were the best friend she ever had.  Her life was immeasurably better with you in it.  I’m saying that fate may not have a say in this.  I can’t see the future.  But some things you just can’t avoid.  As sure as a falling leaf is gonna hit the ground.  I know you.  You’re going to take the third way out… And you’re going to die.”

Silence.  Frost ran up Chloe’s spine.

“If the Traveler is functionally immortal when they’re awake,” Tobanga said, “then why did Max almost die trying to save you?  Because she was _willing_ to.  That’s the only way this works.  You have to get to the point where you’ll sacrifice yourself with a smile on your face.  You may not think you’ll get to that point, Chloe, but you will.  I know you like to repeat to yourself how awful you think you are, but the unifying trait among human beings is that the things they tell themselves the most have the least amount of truth to them.”

“What _is_ the third option?” Chloe asked.

Another moment of silence before Tobanga said “I’m not telling you.”

“What?  Why?”

“Because,” Tobanga said, “it would be cheating.”

 _Unbe_ fucking _lievable!_

 _“Cheating?”_ Chloe asked.  “This is bullshit!  I thought you were supposed to point the way!”

“First off,” Tobanga said, “I’m not _supposed_ to do anything.  I just do this for fun.  I’m not here for _your_ convenience, I'm here for _my_ amusement.  And second, I _did_ point the fucking way.”

“A _storm_ is coming!” Chloe said.  “Thousands of people could die!”

 _“Billions_ of people _could_ die every day,” Tobanga said.  “But they don’t because the people who can save them do their jobs.  Welcome to the world.  But I’m a fan of yours, remember?  I’m a fan because even though you may be a _complete_ fool, you’re not an idiot.  You’ll figure it out, or at least I hope you do… No matter what it costs, you’ll figure it out.”

Frustration had reached the kind of tenor within Chloe that made blood rush to her ears.  A fountain of profane, harried gibberish was itching to spew from Chloe’s mouth, but it filtered itself into a singular thought that was so bold that it popped out of her mouth in a bark.

“You _suck_ at this!”

Chloe turned and tried to storm out of the forest before Tobanga’s voice, authoritative and charismatic as it was young and childlike, sounded again.

“Make no mistake,” Tobanga said.  “When it comes to you and this town… You can’t win.”

Chloe turned around.

Tobanga was gone.

* * *

 

After prolonged and painful negotiations with the woods (as there was no help leading her out as there had been leading her in), Chloe stepped onto the sidewalk leading to the courtyard of the Bradford Dormitory.  She walked up to the stoop to her house confused about her situation in life, terrified of her fate… and unaware that she was being watched.

She kicked her shoes off at the door and quietly felt her way through the house until she got to the bedroom.  She pulled off her sweatpants and her shirt, depositing both in a hamper near the bedroom window.  Chloe stood in just a pair of boxers and stared at the sleeping Max.

Chloe could have _throttled_ Tobanga.  It might not have done any good, she being some kind of immortal… _thing_ or whatever, but still.  Her words held an absolute finality with Chloe.  Tobanga told her that she was going to die.  Of _course_ she was.  It just fucking _figured,_ didn’t it?

Staring at Max, mouth open on her pillow, Chloe felt the weight of the sacrifices made on her behalf to get these six extra years.  Max tried so damn _hard_ to save her.  To save Arcadia Bay.  And _now?_

Now, Chloe remembered reading on some website a few years back about a space shuttle that had a problem during launch that meant the ship would burn up on re-entry, killing the crew inside.  There was nothing that could have been done.  And rather than tell the crew about it, the mission control guys played it as though nothing was wrong.  They tried to justify it after the fact by saying that informing the crew of their impending and inevitable doom would have been cruel.

It made sense to Chloe.  Now more than ever.

She got into bed, pressed herself against Max’s bare back as she put an arm around her sleeping girlfriend’s stomach, and kissed the back of Max’s neck before she drifted off to sleep.


	7. A Sheltered Place in This Town

**Chapter 7: A Sheltered Place in This Town**

_Gray._

_A mass of wind made opaque and tangible._

_Vast and all-encompassing, there is nothing else.  No sea.  No sky._

_Light blooms from within, chased by long and deafening belches of thunder that could shatter glass._

_Rain falls as both an icy herald and a dour accompaniment._

* * *

_August 27, 2019_

Chloe woke to chills and an empty bed.  Max had gone to teach her class.  Chloe had been so out of it with her own problems that she had forgotten to register with Max that she thought going into school this morning was not the best idea in the world.

But knowing Max, she would have brushed that off.  Six years ago, Max took a bullet for her, and though it had not lent her bravado, it did lend her courage.

The problem, in Chloe’s estimation, was that the courage Max gained in her attempted sacrifice for Chloe’s life came when she was eighteen years old.  She survived an impossible situation at an age when one was most likely to feel invincible.  And while every other facet of Max Caulfield’s being had aged and matured, Chloe feared (and it was a very _deep_ fear) that this one aspect had stopped growing in her teens. 

As Chloe arose from bed, putting her feet on the carpet, she rubbed her face and considered her own outlook on mortality.  Chloe figured that she had the opposite problem.  Though it had taken her until the fall after she had turned twenty-four to retrieve the memories of such instances from timelines beyond the one upon which she now stood, Chloe had died five times before she had begun her third decade of life.

Chloe Price didn’t want to die.

And now, because of abilities over time and space given unto her by some Great Mystical Whatever, a woman who was scared to die had been granted functional immortality, unless she decided to sacrifice herself.  Because of _course._ Because if fate didn’t decide to chew her up like a rubber toy in a dog’s mouth, then irony sure as fuck would.

Chloe checked her phone on the nightstand.  The time read 7:02 AM.  And she had a text.

From Joyce.

_Oh, joy…_

* * *

As Chloe Price was brushing her teeth in her own bathroom, the girl who called herself _“_ _Lorraine_ _Foster”_ was doing the same thing in the second floor bathroom of the Bradford Dormitory.

Lorraine spat out some hot tap water she had poured into a little plastic cup before she put the cup and her toothbrush into an old _Hot Dawg Man_ lunchbox that she had gotten off of Ebay.  She collected the lunchbox and a plastic grocery bag that contained the boy-shorts and t-shirt she used as pajamas before she made her way out into the hall.

She slithered her way through the _Sturm und Drang_ of the lives of teenage girls playing themselves out publicly in the pre-class hours of the last Tuesday in August.  Girls she didn’t know, and didn’t _care_ to know, talking big games and short cons, talking with their hands as though their own words were poorly disciplined orchestras that needed rigid conducting.

It was all mindless gibberish to Lorraine, who considered her distance from her fellow young women greater than the distance between human beings and gnats.

Lorraine’s room was Room 219, whose door was blocked by a tall, skinny blonde arguing with her slightly shorter, slightly pudgier clone.  Lorraine tried to remember their names, and was surprised to find that she could do just that.  The one leaning against her door was named Josephine Macy, and the one standing in the middle of the hall was named Elodie Hoover.

And Lorraine reckoned that she would have received no points for guessing that they were arguing about the dreaded _“Boy Shit.”_

“You _did_ this to me!” Josephine said, sounding angry while looking sad.

Elodie looked like she was about to sputter.  “I-I didn’t…”

“You _did,”_ Josephine said.  “You _did_ this to me.”

As Lorraine inched closer, trying to play the role of the shy art student that she was not, Elodie said “If I had known you wanted to ask Kevin out, then I would have…”

“But you _knew,”_ Josephine said.  “I texted you…”

It was at this point that Josephine noticed Lorraine.

_“What?”_ Josephine asked, her voice as loud and abrupt as a car crash.

Lorraine nodded and backed away.  This wasn’t worth starting shit over, and these two would hopefully tire themselves out soon.

Josephine continued her rant.  “I _texted_ you and told you that I wanted to go to that party with Kevin that one time.

“Yeah,” Elodie said.  “That _one_ time.  I can’t remember _every_ text that _everyone_ sends me.”

“I cannot _fucking_ believe you!”

“Usually, when a girl likes a guy, she talks about him day and night.  I’m sorry this happened, and I’m sorry this sucks for you, but you should have hit the point a little harder.  That’s all I’m saying.”

_“I sent you a text!"_ Josephine said in a voice that made Lorraine’s temples throb.  “Just how hard did you expect me to hit that fucking point?”

“A little harder than you did,” Elodie said.

Lorraine put her palm up to her face as she realized that her initial stance of peaceful non-interference in the hopes of this situation sorting itself out had proven disastrously wrong.

This _was_ worth starting shit over.

Lorraine couldn’t hear what Josephine was saying as she walked up to her.  Josephine broke off and looked at Lorraine again.

_“What now?”_ Josephine asked.

Lorraine slowly blinked her green eyes at Josephine, keeping her face stony.

“You smell really nice,” Lorraine said.  “Has anyone ever told you that?”

Josephine looked from Lorraine to Elodie with mouth slightly agape, with eyes slightly bulging, before looking back to Lorraine again.

“Thank you?” Josephine said, raising the statement into a question with the power of her own unsure inflection.

“That can’t just be perfume,” Lorraine said.  “Is it, like, the _moisturizer_ you use?  Is there a whole body butter thing going on there?”

Josephine’s eyes narrowed in disbelief.  “What the fuck business is it of yours how I smell?”

“Well, I need to be sure,” Lorraine said.

“Be sure of _what?”_

Lorraine blinked her eyes slowly again as she narrowed the gap between herself and Josephine.  They were less than a foot away from each other.

“I need to be sure that when I rip off your head, shove it down the front of your panties, and _make_ you go fuck yourself, there will be one thing about it that’ll actually be kinda pleasant.  I _care,_ you see.”

Whether it was the relative quietude of Lorraine’s voice, the lack of animation in her face, or that Lorraine was using her brilliant, unblinking green eyes to bore holes into her, Josephine immediately dropped her jaw and went a shade paler.  Lorraine tried to insist that this was no idle threat using only body language, and it appeared she was successful.  Lorraine could only guess at the look on Elodie’s face, as her eyes were for Josephine and Josephine alone.

Josephine’s jaw went up and down a couple of times before she managed to find a word she could use.

“I… I…”

“I don’t care,” Lorraine said.  “I don’t care about your problems, and I don’t care whose mouth this Kevin guy’s dick lands in.  Just know that when it _does_ land _,_ it’ll happen somewhere that _isn’t_ the door to my dorm room.”

Josephine looked to her left and saw the door, as though she was, until now, oblivious to her surroundings.

“I’m sorry,” Josephine said, newfound model of meekness that she was.  “I didn’t know…”

“Now you do,” Lorraine said as she allowed herself another long blink.  “And I accept your apology.  Because I know you won’t do this again.  So long as you know that you won’t be getting an open casket funeral if you do.”

Lorraine wouldn’t have bet that Josephine’s eyes could have gone any wider, but that’s exactly what they did.  Lorraine had to scream at herself within her own mind to keep from smiling.

“I-I’m sorry,” Josephine said.

“So you keep saying,” said Lorraine.  “Just fuck off, Josephine.  All three of us want you to.”

Josephine immediately took Elodie’s hand, and the two began power-walking back down the hall away from Lorraine, the two of them stealing glances and animatedly whispering to each other as they did so.

That was _fear._ Only now did Lorraine allow herself to smile.  Those two silly little girls would spread the story of what just happened, and Lorraine knew that she would be getting weird looks and open taunts as the week drew to a close.

Which was just fine with her.

The girl who called herself Lorraine Foster didn’t plan on being at Blackwell that long.

Lorraine entered the monochrome wasteland that was Room 219 and dropped both her lunchbox and bag of underclothes near the bed.  There was nothing on the walls, the school issue desk near the window had but a cheap laptop.  There was nothing that couldn’t be dropped or abandoned at a moment’s notice which, Lorraine remembered, was part of the plan.  There was no stereo, no television, no posters, and no photographs.

Well… not on the walls, anyway.

Lorraine went to the desk and pulled a drawer out, from which she removed the sole article contained therein.

It was a photograph.  Not an original, but rather one that she had printed out from a photography website some months before.

In this photograph, a rather handsome young blonde man in a red jacket had a gun pressed into the gut of a tall, thin young lady with blue hair struggling to come out from underneath a black beanie.  Her mouth formed an arch, her teeth prominent as she was apparently attempting to enunciate an _“F”_ sound as the picture was being taken.  It was as though the Bugs Bunny impression the young lady with blue hair was attempting to pull off was physically paining her.

Whatever cool points Max Caulfield would have lost with Lorraine’s dim-witted, image-conscious classmates as the photographer behind the ubiquitous _Lighthouse_ would have been regained tenfold with this photograph, which was simply known as _“Untitled.”_ This was the photo that saved the life of Chloe Price, and the last thing Max Caulfield had done before the young man in the photo, Nathan Prescott, had turned the gun on Max herself, putting her in a coma that had lasted four whole days.  Or so the lore surrounding the photo went.

This particular photo was a sore spot in the life and career of Max Caulfield.  Mere hours after its taking, _Untitled_ was entered into evidence in the criminal case brought against Nathan Prescott by the state of Oregon and, as such, was in the public domain.  Max had never made a dime from this photograph, which was very popular in some circles, and had only been seen at all due to its initial publication in the _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _Beacon._

In an online retrospective of Caulfield’s work, the art critic for _Village Voice_ called _Untitled “Weegee-esque”_ and said that it was _“proof that, in spite of the pedestrian nature of her output, Max Caulfield has the heart of an artist.”_

But for Lorraine, the moment captured in this photograph was the final moment of a welcoming world that made sense.  Only chaos followed.

She placed the photo on top of the desk and opened the second drawer.  Inside was a thirty-eight caliber revolver.  It held six bullets, but only contained five.  It had only been fired on one occasion; that occasion being the night prior, when Lorraine fired it through the window of Max Caulfield’s living room.

Lorraine could not convince herself that she missed her target, but rather that she did not anticipate Chloe Price crashing into Max at the last split-second, saving her from the bullet the surely would have killed her.

As to _how_ Chloe Price managed to know the bullet was coming?  Well, Lorraine had to think about that.

Looking at the gun in the drawer, the girl who called herself Lorraine Foster tried to plan ahead.

* * *

The text said:

**Come to the diner.  Not tonight.  Not for lunch.  NOW!**

_So Joyce heard about last night,_ Chloe thought as she pulled The Taxi into the parking lot of the Two Whales Diner.  _I’ll be yelled at or smothered.  Maybe both._

She adjusted her trench and pushed her fedora to the back of her head.  This late August was unseasonably chilly.  Chloe reckoned that autumn was coming early.

The Two Whales was packed, and Chloe was momentarily overwhelmed by a wall of body heat and the funk that occurs due to a lack of hygiene.  What Chloe was unaware of, thanks to her nine month stint in Seattle, was that in addition to the usual assortment of long-haul Leonard International truckers and off-duty cops who patronized the Two Whales, it had also become a favorite attraction of Sasquatch-obsessed out-of-towners.  A clutch of them hovered around a booth to her right, listening to a woman in her thirties (that they kept calling Claire) tell her story about her own sighting.  A man she assumed was her husband sat next to her, smiling with what looked like pride.

As their conversation went in one ear and out the other, Chloe stole a peek from around the bulletin board.

Joyce was sitting in the booth she usually took for business or for chats with Chloe herself.  She was facing the rest of the diner, while a man with sand-colored hair who appeared to be wearing a suit had her back to Chloe.  Joyce looked upset, talking to this guy: the corners of her mouth curling down and her eyebrows a flat, angry line.

Chloe ducked back behind the bulletin board and took off her hat and put her trench coat over her arm.  Her eyes caught the actual bulletin board itself, which was wallpapered with multiple copies of just one postcard-sized slip of thick paper.

It was a picture that Chloe was familiar with.  Indeed, anyone who had ventured into Arcadia Bay’s sole post office was familiar with this photograph, as it was blown up to wall-size in the lobby.  It was a black-and-white photo of eight men, all bearded and hard-looking as, as men in photos taken in 1912 had a habit of being.  They were all wearing suits, five of them were wearing old-timey round-rimmed glasses, and four of them were sitting in front of the four of them that were standing.

These were _“The Founding Fathers of_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _,”_ as the small plaque in the post office proclaimed.  While Arcadia Bay had existed for some time prior, it was these eight men who took Arcadia Bay from _“unincorporated hamlet”_ to _“fully self-governing town.”_

This picture of The Founding Fathers of Arcadia Bay had been repurposed into tickets to the Museum of Arcadia Bay History, which, the ticket was gracious enough to inform anyone who laid eyes on it, was opening on September First.

_Max would like this,_ Chloe thought.  _I should take her… If the town is still here and I’m not dead._

Chloe reached out to take one, when…

“Detective Shithead.”

Chloe looked up.

Vivian.  Two Whales waitress and world champion practitioner of the stink-eye.  Chloe did not know when or how she had run afoul of this redheaded waitress who had her hip cocked in a display of unimpressed boredom, but Chloe had always been up for antagonizing her.  Chloe figured that if she had had a therapist, then said therapist would have racked up hours on this one aspect of her personality alone.

“Hey,” Chloe said.

Vivian tried to stare _through_ her.

The previous night had given Chloe both magic time powers and a de-facto death sentence.  Screwing with Vivian didn’t have its usual appeal, and would make a miniscule dent in the shell of confusion and hopelessness that had enveloped her since she fell asleep next to Max.

But right about now… a miniscule dent was better than nothing.

“No smooch for the hero of Arcadia Bay?” Chloe asked.

“You got dirty with drug dealers and have the entire town kissing your ass,” Vivian said.  “That’s supposed to impress me?”

“I only did it _to_ impress you,” Chloe said.  She took a step forward, and a visibly uncomfortable Vivian took a step back.

“Do you have any idea how much I _missed_ you?” Chloe asked.  “I spent nine months in Seattle, and in all that time, I _longed_ for you.  I missed your dandruff, Vivian.  I missed that smell of hairspray and stale coffee.  I missed your cank…”

_“Chloe!”_

Chloe looked over.  Joyce had her eyes set on Chloe as the guy who was sitting across from her was getting up to leave.

“Quit torturing Vivian,” Joyce said.

“She started it,” Chloe said.  “She called me a dirty word.”

“And I’ll call you dirtier words if you don’t stop.  She has a _job_ to do.”

Chloe looked at Vivian, blew her a kiss, and walked toward her mother.

She walked past the guy in the suit with the sandy hair en route.  He looked upset.

And so did Joyce, even through she was wrapping Chloe in a bear hug.

“Someone _shot_ at you?” Joyce asked right before she let go.

Chloe deposited her coat and hat onto the booth seat next to her.

“They shot at Max,” Chloe said.  “They were right outside the window.”

Mother and daughter sat down on opposite sides of the booth.

“And they _missed?”_ Joyce asked.

“They wouldn’t have,” Chloe said.  “But I had to, like, _tackle_ Max in the nick of time.”

_“Jesus,”_ Joyce said.  “Do they have any suspects?  Do you know who could have done this?”

“Given how many cops I put away,” Chloe said as she shifted in her seat, “about one or two hun-“

Chloe’s foot hit something underneath the table.  She craned her neck down to her right to see what it could have been.

It was the Xerox box.  The one she’d actively made a point of leaving at Joyce’s Sunday night.

“Yeah,” Joyce said.  “You left that at the house.  You must have forgotten it.”  Whether that was genuine helpfulness in her mother’s voice, or deliberately crafted passive-aggression, Chloe could not say.  She felt a snowball form in her gut all on its own.

_“Joyce?”_

Chloe’s mother looked up to see Vivian standing by the counter with an open hoodie on over her uniform.

“You said to tell you when I was going on break,” Vivian said.

Joyce seemed perturbed by the sweatshirt Vivian was wearing.  “What’re you gonna do?”

“I’m going across the street to get a soda.”

“We have soda _here.”_

“Do we have Mello Yello?” Vivian asked.

“You know good and damn _well_ we don’t have Mello Yello,” Joyce said, with more edge to her voice than there was actual voice.  “We have Mountain Dew.”

“Well,” Vivian said, “okay, then.  Back in a few.”  And then she walked out the front door.

Joyce rolled her eyes and whispered to herself _“I swear to Christ.”_ Joyce got up out of the booth.

“Where are you going?” Chloe asked.

“To wait tables,” Joyce said.  “The party don’t stop just because she does.”

“Have you given any thought to hiring another waitress?” Chloe asked.

Joyce sighed.  “I’m not above serving food to people,” she said.  “And shoot me if I ever act like I am.”

As Joyce walked away, Chloe scanned the table and saw a business card where Joyce had been sitting. Chloe picked it up.

_Joseph Thompson_  
_Attorney  
_ _Trident Construction_

Chloe set the card back down on the table.  It must have belonged to the guy in the suit that Joyce was talking to minutes before.  Just as she was beginning to wonder what an attorney for a construction company wanted with her mother, Chloe’s phone rang.

It was Trevor.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, Chloe,” Trevor said.  “Mayor Newman wanted me to call you with daily updates.”

“What do we got?”

“Nothing,” Trevor said.  “At least not on the shooting, anyway.  It’s hard to find people who just stop and pop like that.  But my captain wanted me to tell you that your security detail is going to be in place another couple of nights.”

Chloe sighed.

“But,” Trevor said, “I got a little something on that car from yesterday.”

“Do tell.”

“We found this Paul Sefton guy.  He lives here in Arcadia Bay.  He never reported his car stolen.”

“And we know he didn’t get out of the car after it crashed and walked away.”

“Right,” Trevor said.  “That crash would have killed _anyone_ in that car, seatbelt or no seatbelt.”

Chloe ran through what she remembered from the crash site.  “And he didn’t report a theft?”

“Nope,” Trevor said.

“That’s… _weird,”_ Chloe said.  “The keys to the car were still in the ignition.”

“I know, right?  If he wasn’t in the car, then that means the car was stolen.  If the keys were in the car, then they were stolen, too.  The guy got a ride back into town from this loony bin he works at out in the country, it’s a two hour commute, and even after that, there’s no report on a stolen car.  Not with us, not with the Highway Patrol, not with the County Sheriff.”

The turning gears in Chloe’s head caught on something.

“Wait,” Chloe said.  “That place he works at out in the country.  That wouldn’t be Haverford Asylum, would it?”

“As a matter of fact, y… _What the fuck?”_

The line went dead.  Chloe looked at her phone, wondering what could have caused the absolute terror she had heard in Trevor’s voice.

It was about twenty seconds before Chloe found out.

A drop of something thick and red hit the window at which Chloe was sitting.  The crimson liquid left a trail as it slid down the glass.  Chloe looked beyond this solitary drop to the street outside.  Similar drops slowly started carpeting the asphalt.

A chill as Chloe remembered six years ago in a timeline beyond.  Snow on a hot day.  An eclipse.  Beached whales.  Chloe had called them _“plagues”_ at the time, if only to herself.  And now, in 2019, with another woman given cosmic powers, the plagues had come again.

The first plague: Thick, red rain.

It hit the diner and the street with a force that made it sound like the area was underneath a grand display of monotonous fireworks.  The patrons of the diner started their own dull buzzing as the windows and the street fell under a glaze of liquid scarlet.

From what Chloe could see outside the window, Vivian came running from the gas station across the street, bottle of Mello Yello in hand.  She looked like she’d been running through a lawn sprinkler that had been hooked up to the blood pool in an abattoir.

There was a mania on her face.  A look of true fright.  In her unhinged yearning for familiar shelter, she couldn’t have been looking where she was going.

And that phenomenon spread to the cars on the road.

A red pickup truck going at least forty-five collided with Vivian in the middle of the street.  Chloe looked away as the redheaded waitress fell under its wheels.

It took the horrific crunch of a human body under an automobile that didn’t slow down, it took the screams of her mother and the gasps of the rest of the patrons within the Two Whales, it took the gradually slowing beat of her heart in her chest before Chloe remembered something that, in hindsight, should have been obvious:

It wasn’t too late.

Chloe forced herself to look at the mangled, dismembered body of Vivian out in the wet, red street as she held out her hand.

**_Booommm…_ **

A spiral within Chloe, burning out counter-clockwise…

Red rain stopped in mid-air, before defying gravity and floating back up toward the unpitying heavens from which they came.

The pickup track came back in reverse.  The sound of Vivian’s death played back like a heavy metal record being scoured for hidden Satanic messages by worried, meddling parents.

Vivian’s right arm reattached.  The slick stain left by her blood on the pavement receded into her body.  She sprang into an upward position from underneath the truck’s tires like a Jack that wouldn’t stay in its box.

The truck continued its reverse voyage beyond the point of her view as the rain spattered Vivian ran backwards into the gas station.

The scarlet slop pit the world had become slowly vanished as the rain continued to rise, being replaced by the former glory that was once this stretch of Arcadia Bay, Oregon.

Back, back, _back_ to the magical twenty second window of time after Trevor had hung up on her, and before the rain fell on this particular street.

Chloe let go, and time once again resumed its forward march.

She _immediately_ sprang from the booth and bolted through the diner and out the door, across the street, not even looking where she was going.  Indeed, during the rewind, she noticed no other cars had come down the street in that time.

She heard a thick drop hit the street next to her.  She felt another one wing the shoulder of the red flannel shirt she was wearing.

Chloe nimbly negotiated the door of the gas station to see Vivian paying for her piss-yellow soda.

Chloe spoke between deep breaths.  “Both of you… stay inside…”

“Chloe,” Vivian said, “what the fuck?”

“Just… do it…”

The spatter of viscous rain on pavement outside had already begun.  Vivian and the gas station attendant gaped out the window at the reddening world in open-mouthed horror.  Only now could Chloe catch her breath.  She didn’t need to look.

From behind the shelf that held more brands of beef jerky than there were stars in the heavens, a little girl with copper skin wearing an Oregon Ducks jersey sauntered out, sipping from her own bottle of Mello Yello.  She took a sip, looked at Chloe, and smiled.

“I don’t know about you,” Tobanga said, “but I’m having _fun…”_


	8. Conscience Do Cost

**Chapter 8: Conscience Do Cost**

_A little earlier…_

Max knew the day was fucked from the moment her first student came in for the first class of the day.

At a little before eight, Payton Mills stepped into the classroom and actually stopped and stared at Max, with little regard to how his mouth was open, or how he might have caused a traffic jam with regards to his fellow students who may have wanted to come in.

_He’s heard,_ Max thought.  _They’ve all heard._

“Good morning,” Max said.

Payton’s jaw bobbed up and down.  Max could practically see the questions bubble up in his head.  _Didn’t you get shot at last night?  Why are you here?  Did they_ make _you come in today?_ And Max couldn’t really blame him for his confusion.  What does one say to someone who’d been shot at the night before?  And what would she say to someone trying to navigate that question?

Payton managed a strangled “Good morning” before meekly walking to his seat.

The same drama played out with Sara Killian, with Joey Ortiz, with Kara Danvers, indeed with all the kids in her class.  And Max expected the kids in the rest of the day’s classes would act in much the same fashion.

Strangely, the only one who didn’t stop, gape, stutter, or fluster was Lorraine Foster, who calmly and breezily walked to her seat.

The bell rang, and Max stood before the class.

“So… You’ve all heard.”

No one said anything.  Max decided to take that as a “yes.”

“Before anyone asks,” Max said, “I’m fine.  There’s nothing any of you need to worry about.  Yes, I was… _shot at_ last night, but the police are doing everything they can.”

Max shifted from one foot to the other.

“Now, trying to teach a class with all of you knowing what you know would be… y’know… _weird,_ so let’s just make this one a free period today, huh, guys?  Just try to keep it down to a dull roar.”

Max walked to her desk as the class whispered eagerly to each other.  The actual class he had planned was, well, _still planned,_ thus leaving her with nothing to do.  With a lack of constructive activity over her head, Max broke out her phone and checked her Twitter feed.

The minutes passed in a quiet so alive with whispers that it was like a rattlesnake rattling its tail.  Max got lost on her phone until she heard the clopping sound of shoes hitting linoleum.  Max looked up.

Lorraine Foster had left her seat and was coming toward her.

She was wearing a forest green t-shirt underneath a retro jean jacket.  She had baggy jeans on over what appeared to be combat boots.  A lock of brown hair came down over green eyes that were staring holes into Max.

Lorraine reached into her jacket.

It was like a scene from any number of movies Max had seen: the assassin reaching into their blazer to pull out a gun and make an attempt on the good guy’s life.  Max’s awareness was heightened already, and readied her hand to protect herself… which struck her as dumb, even in the moment.  Most of the times her life had been in danger, she’d had rewind powers to get herself out of hot water, and that wasn’t the case this time.

Lorraine’s hand came out of her jacket… holding a photo.

Max let her breath out.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,” Lorraine whispered.  The softness of it was like ice cubes cracking in warm soda.  It gave Max the creeps.

“No,” Max whispered, wondering why she was doing so.  “Not at all.”

“I’ve never been in a position to do this with anyone before, but… May I have your autograph?”

Lorraine handed the photo to a clearly confused Max.  She looked at it, and her expression immediately darkened.

Nathan with the gun on Chloe.

She looked at Lorraine, who blinked her green eyes slowly.

“You do realize it’s bad form to ask for an autograph on a photo that didn’t make the photographer any money, right?”

“I know,” Lorraine said.  “Let’s just say that… this photo inspired me to come here.”

Lorraine smiled.  Max knew better than to judge a kid she barely knew, but her instant reaction was that this was the same kind of smile Hannibal Lecter must have had when serving the remains of some unlucky schmoe to his dinner guests.

Max got a pen from her desk and signed the back of the photo with no dedication before handing it back to Lorraine with a mixture of honest gratitude and a desire to get this girl the hell away from her.

“Thank you, Miss Caulfield,” Lorraine said, smile still firmly in place.  “Is it _‘Miss?’_ Or _‘Miz?’”_

Max crinkled her nose.  “I never figured that one out myself,” she said.  _“’Miss’_ is fine.”

Lorraine nodded, held up the photo in gratitude, and went back to her seat.  Max went back to her phone.

She had been checking Kate Bradford’s Instagram feed for about fifteen seconds when the sound of rain outside mixed with the whispers of her class.

It sounded… _strange._ As though glycerin was falling form the sky instead of water.

_“Holy fuck!”_

Max looked up and saw Payton Mills standing at the window, the face under his light ginger hair somehow paler than usual.

And then Max saw the window.  It was flecked with something red and thick.

Every student in class was on their feet watching as the red rain doused the front courtyard of Blackwell.  All of them, to a soul, were aghast.

Max, too, was stunned to the spot.  She remembered two things in rapid succession.

The first was the wonder and mystery of snow falling on an eighty degree early October day six years ago, in a place and time so close to here, and yet irretrievably far away.

And the second was a nightmare she’d had, the most vivid of her life.  Waking up in this very room as every bird in town pasted themselves against that very window.

“Everyone get away from the window and into the hall!” Max said.

None of them moved.  How could they?  They were seeing something they’d never seen before.  Max inhaled deeply and hoped her voice didn’t crack when she yelled:

**_“NOW!”_ **

* * *

All in all, the rain lasted a mere three minutes.  The fact that this weather was as brief as it was anomalous meant that those three minutes came and went with no injury and no loss of life to the citizenry of Arcadia Bay.

As the hours that followed the event went on, nature itself disproved the greatest fear about the red rain: Namely that the rain itself was not, in fact, blood, as evidenced by the fact that this thick red rain somehow evaporated as the day progressed, leaving nothing more black smudges on streets, homes, and businesses.  Arcadia Bay looked less like a slaughterhouse as the morning turned into the afternoon, and more like someone had left dirty handprints on the town itself. 

The only permanent damage that the rain managed to inflict was to the clothing of the poor people caught outdoors in those three terrifying minutes.  Fabric samples were taken from willing volunteers by the Arcadia Bay Fire Department, to be sent to the University of Oregon for proper study. No one knew how long that would take.

In times of weirdness pertaining to weather, cities bigger than Arcadia Bay would consult the local weatherman or, perhaps, a scientist for an explanation that would ease the populace.  Arcadia Bay had neither.  The next best thing was the science teacher at Blackwell Academy of Arts & Sciences: one Warren Graham.

_“It’s not exactly as though red rain is_ unheard _of,"_ Warren told Bill Koepner of the _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _Beacon.  “There have been instances of red rain falling in Kerala in_ _India_ _, for example.  They found out later that it was colored by spores from local algae.”_

Warren’s explanation seemed to sate many within town as Koepner’s story went up on the _Beacon’s_ website that evening.  All but the most well-informed, Warren himself among them, as the algae that had colored the rain in Kerala was not found in Oregon.

Or North America, for that matter.

* * *

 

Chloe walked Vivian back to the Two Whales after the rain had stopped.  Joyce was waiting for them.  When they met within the confines of the diner, Joyce said that emergency workers and cops would be crawling the streets of the town, as well as distressed people looking for answers.  This would mean business, and Joyce told Chloe that she couldn’t find it within her heart to charge for any food or coffee they might need.  Joyce then asked Chloe if she would help wait tables for as long as she could.

Even though Chloe had waited tables in the Two Whales upon occasion, it had been when she was a teenager, and she had been forced to do so every time as a sort of punishment.  But now, looking out at the slick red street, Chloe couldn’t find it within herself to refuse this call.

For three hours, as the offending rain evaporated and the people poured in to eat, talk, and charge their phones, Chloe shuttled food from the counter to the tables, refusing any and all tips.  Whatever free minute she could wheedle out of the throng of demanding people she used to call Max, who wasn’t answering.  It occurred to Chloe to be terrified of this development, before she realized that if anything _had_ happened to Max, then Trevor, Principal Grant, _and_ Mayor Newman would have blown up her phone by now.

The sun was threatening to set as Chloe got into The Taxi.  There were dark smudges from the evaporated rain all over the pristine yellow paint job.  Being as everyone and their mother was most likely getting their cars washed by now, Chloe decided that she’d put off doing the same until a later date.

Max was waiting for her on the couch when she got home.  Given the day’s events, Chloe didn’t know what to say, other than:

“Are you okay?”

Max nodded weakly.

“You, uh… you didn’t answer your phone,” Chloe said.

“I know,” Max said.  “I was on it when the rain hit.  It took hours to get all the students calmed down and back to the dorms.  By the time I got back to the classroom, the damn thing was dead, and I left my charger here… Sorry.”

“S’okay,” Chloe said as she scanned Max’s face.  For the first time in her life, Chloe couldn’t tell what Max was thinking.

Max looked at Chloe wanly.  “It’s started again.”

Chloe nodded.

“Of _fic_ ially,” Max said.  “This is… Chloe, if I ask you something, will you promise to be honest?”

Chloe tilted her head.  “What kind of question is that?  Of _course_ I’ll be honest.  You couldn’t _stop_ me from being honest.”

“Chloe… have you used your powers at all since last night?”

_Lie!_ The more selfish parts of Chloe told her.  _Lie your narrow ass off!_

“Yes,” Chloe said.  “Twice.”

Max nodded.  Her face held the slightest shadow of disappointment, and it made Chloe feel a foot tall.

“Why?” Max asked.

“Well,” Chloe said, “once it kicked in all on its own.”

Max’s eyebrows rose.  “What do you mean?”

“It kicks on automatically when you’re in danger,” Chloe said.  “You didn’t know that?”

Those freshly raised eyebrows of Max’s decided to furrow.  “No,” Max said.  “I mean, in hindsight it makes sense.  Like, I almost got crushed by this huge spool-looking thing at the junkyard when you told me to find bottles to shoot at, but… I don’t remember using the power _consciously…_ Wait, when were you in danger?”

“Someone threw a rock at my head,” Chloe said, realizing that she was still being truthful while still not telling Max about Tobanga.  The fact that she was staying mute about this development triggered a conflict within Chloe that congealed into a brown, funky, emotional haze.  Max needed hope.  Max needed to know that all the shit she went through six years ago wasn’t for nothing… even though it very well may have been.

“Who threw a rock at your head?”

“Some kid,” Chloe said.  “I hope something _bad_ happens to that little fucker.”

“And the second time?”

Chloe sighed.  “I saw Vivian at the diner get run over by a truck during the rain today.”

This took Max by surprise.  All she could muster was an “Oh…”

Chloe didn’t need to ask if Max could even blame her for saving Vivian.  She knew she wouldn’t.

Max put her head in her hands.  “This is… just a fucking _mess.”_

“If it helps,” Chloe said, “I don’t think the same rules from six years ago are in play now.”

Max looked at Chloe again.  “What do you mean?”

“Look, snow falling on a pretty day is one thing.  Or an eclipse when there shouldn’t be one.  But _this?  Red rain?_ It feels like… it feels like a _tantrum_ of some kind.  Or… I dunno, but this is some Roland Emmerich shit happening right now.  And… I don’t think me using or not using my power is going to affect anything.  This storm _wants_ to come.”

Max sighed and stood up.  “Then we’re leaving.”

“What?” 

Max walked up to Chloe.  “We’re getting our stuff, getting in The Taxi, and we’re driving back to Seattle.  Right now.”

“We can’t,” Chloe said.

“Why not?”

“What’s the thing you told me back in November?  When you said that my memories from those other timelines coming back were connected to Justin’s murder?  You said that everything that happens in Arcadia Bay is connected to fifty other things.”

“So?”

“So,” Chloe said, “I found out that that car with the missing driver?  That car was from the same hospital out in the country that Nathan’s at.  If those two things are connected, then what else is?  The storm?  The guy who took a shot at you?”

“I don’t care,” Max said.  “I’ll let the person who tried to kill me walk away if it means I don’t have to see this town destroyed.  Or you dead.”

“I just think… I just think that there’s a way out of this.  There _has_ to be.”

“What makes you so _sure?”_ Max asked, and the selfish part of Chloe chimed in again.

_I’m not.  You found a way out of this, and I want to be as smart as you.  For the first time in a short life, I want to be as good as Max Caulfield._

“Because I refuse to believe in a universe that gives me these powers, and… I’m just not supposed to _use_ them?  There has to be a reason.  There has to be a way, and I just… I just need to be the best version of myself to figure it out.”

Max stood blinking, stunned for a second, before she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around Chloe.

“You don’t have anything to prove,” Max said.  “Not to me.  Not to anyone.”

“The world is ending,” Chloe said.  “I have _everything_ to prove.”

* * *

The girl who called herself Lorraine Foster drove her little blue Honda to a stretch of street at the edge of town in the dead of night. 

She knew this place well.  So well in fact that she knew where the angles were to the few security cameras in the area… and their blind-spots.

She pulled into a small lot about a car-length wide in the back of a building.  She got out and opened the trunk, taking out a lockpicking kit provided for her by her… by Father.

She had cased this place before during her time in Arcadia Bay, wandering around, getting ideas about where best to apply pressure.  Father was kind to her, never smothering her with direct orders or meaningless structure.  She was given creative freedom, for which she was grateful.

She pulled her hair back and the hood to her sweatshirt up, making sure the security camera across the street didn’t see her.  She walked to the front door of the building, and fifteen seconds later, the door was unlocked and open for all.

Lorraine smiled and backed up, her back to the camera she knew was there.  She looked up and smiled at the darkened sign above the building, illuminated only by the light from across the street.

The Two Whales Diner.

Lorraine, smile still firmly in place, went back to her car to get the can of gasoline.  


	9. Hellamentary

**Chapter 9: Hellamentary**

Chloe and Max sat on the couch until ten in complete silence.  Max with her arm between Chloe’s waist and the couch, Chloe with her cheek resting on the smaller woman’s head.  As the clock struck the twenty-second hour of the day, Max wordlessly got up and took Chloe by the hand, leading her to the bedroom.

They silently undressed in the dark and got into bed.  Max snuggled her forehead into Chloe’s collarbone as Chloe looked up at the darkened ceiling in the buffeting silence, marred only by the far-off drone of a fire engine.

Slowly, she fell asleep.

* * *

_A wall of wind._

_Above, it bled into the clouds, thieving from the sprawling canvas of the sky its joy, its warmth, its grace.  And below…_

_Below, the storm clawed into the depths of the ocean, bringing up a wall of water in its forward wake as high as a skyscraper._

_The air was cold in its most basic, primal sense: It scared the heat away._

* * *

_August 28, 2019_

Chloe’s eyes flickered open two hours before her alarm was set to go off.  The sun wasn’t even out yet.

Max wasn’t in bed, but the light coming in from the open bedroom doorway told Chloe that she was still in the house.

As Chloe brought her feet down to the floor to the side of the bed, she felt an oncoming sense of preemptive loss.  The dreams of the storm were getting more vivid, more memorable.  She fought the urge to wipe the imaginary ocean spray from her face.

She was dreaming about the thing that was going to kill her.  Caught in a nether-world, waiting to be born.

Chloe came over in a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room, and rubbed her hands over her arms as Max’s silhouette filled the bedroom doorway.  She entered, and Chloe saw that she was wearing a navy blue button-down shirt.  She hadn’t put on her pants yet, revealing a pair of truly hideous lavender cotton underwear.

For a woman whose livelihood hinged on the mastery of images, Chloe reckoned that Max had the most atrocious taste in underwear.  Just _horrendously_ eye-watering.  Yeah, Chloe wore boxers, but none of them were Pepto Bismol pink or hangover pee yellow, both of which were in the Caulfield Underthings Ensemble.

_“No one will ever see them,”_ Max had said one time, to which Chloe replied _“Well,_ I _will.”_

“Good morning,” Max said.  “You’re up early.  I’m making coffee if you want some.”

Chloe held out her hand.  Max entered and took it, before Chloe pulled her closer.

“I haven’t brushed my teeth yet,” Max said.

“Neither have I.”

Max sat on Chloe’s skinny thighs as they kissed.  Her left hand was on Chloe’s shoulder while the flat of her right rubbed up and down Chloe’s bare back.  Chloe broke out into the good kind of goosebumps.  They broke the kiss.

“I really like holding you after you've woken up,” Max said.  “You’re all warm. It’s like you just got out of the oven.”

Chloe smiled, but that smile faded as she looked into Max’s eyes.

She had met Max when she was nine years old, and she had been a constant ever since.  Even through the ten years they spent away from each other; five in childhood because the Caulfield family moved away from Seattle, and five in adulthood when Chloe left Max and went back to Arcadia Bay.

Chloe tried to imagine Max in a world that didn’t have her in it.  Not far away because of family or Chloe’s own raging insecurities, but _gone.  Forever._ And the prospect made the bottom of Chloe’s stomach collapse.  She hoped that Max would build herself back up and move on, but she hadn’t made an attempt at another relationship or even had a one night stand during the three years they were broken up, so the possibility of Max whiling away the rest of her years in solitude ventured into the realm of the depressingly likely.  Dooming her forever to mediocrity and loneliness because the one great chance she took in her life upon another human being fizzled out and blew away six years later.  Another corner of the world made worse by the perpetual string of fuck-ups and let-downs that Chloe Price saw as her enduring legacy.

“What is it?” Max asked.

“I love you,” Chloe said.

“I love you, too.”

Chloe put her hand on Max’s cheek.

“We haven’t been telling each other that enough lately,” Chloe said.  “We need to say that more… It’s important.”

Max’s smile began to fall.  Chloe could see the gravity of the situation began to hit her when Chloe’s phone started vibrating on the nightstand.

Max got off of Chloe and picked up the phone.

“It’s Joyce,” Max said as she unplugged the phone from the charger.  She handed it to Chloe, who answered.

“You’re up early,” Chloe said.

A sigh from the other end of the line.  “Yeah… It’s been just a hell of a week, for the Price women, hasn’t it?”

* * *

Joyce and Chloe stood next to the gas pumps across the street from the gutted and burnt remains of the Two Whales Diner.  The sun’s morning light hit it just so, bathing the blackened husk of the eatery in a golden glow, creating a dissonance within Chloe that almost made her nauseous.

_“Fuck,”_ Chloe said.

Joyce just nodded.

Chloe had spent an embarrassing amount of time in the teenage years following the passing of her father imagining a great cleansing fire hitting Arcadia Bay, turning the shitty little town and all of its shitty little people into ash.  Even six years ago, when she offered herself up for death to stop a storm from hitting Arcadia Bay, she did it for the well-being of Max and Max alone.  To sacrifice herself so that she wouldn’t sacrifice _her_ self.  Arcadia Bay only barely entered into the equation for her at all, save for her mother, of course, but Chloe would have rather died saving Max than live in any timeline where there was no Max at all.  Or live with seeing what destroying an entire town would do to the girl she loved.

But _now?_

Now, looking at the ruin of the Two Whales, Chloe felt like someone had broken into her head and defaced her memories with spray paint.  Early teens waiting tables as punishment for all the shit she got up to.  Max guessing the contents of her pockets with time travel powers.  All the meet-ups with connections when she was in the favor business for the Arcadia Bay underworld after her defeated return to Seattle.  Telling Max about a dream she had before Justin Williams’ funeral, starting the whole damn love story all over again.

Even yesterday, saving Vivian from the red rain and the panic that would have killed her, bringing food and coffee to the citizens of Arcadia Bay, who looked less shitty and dumb in the light of an Old Testament style plague, and more brave and frightened.

Gone.

All of it.

And just… just…

_“Fuck,”_ Chloe said again.

Joyce looked at her daughter.  “I heard you the first time.”

Chloe looked back at her mother, before looking back at the Two Whales.

“What did Trevor have to say?” Chloe asked.

“Arson,” Joyce said.  “It started in the dining area instead of in the back where all the burners are.  Insurance will cover everything, I can even get it rebuilt, but…”

“It just won’t be the same,” Chloe said.

Mother looked at daughter, and the sadness in both their eyes matched.

“Right,” Joyce said.

Chloe folded her arms.  Joyce put her hands in her pockets.

“I want to find the guy who did this,” Joyce said.  “I don’t even want to do anything bad to them, I just want to know why.  I thought I’d be angrier about this, but I’m just… I don’t know what.”

Even in this weird sense of loss, Chloe found a smirk that she could put on her face.  “Then maybe you should hire a detective.”

Joyce smiled.  “I’m going to Hell for raising a smart-ass, aren’t I?”

Chloe nodded.  Joyce laughed.

Chloe looked at the Two Whales again, and ran through everything she’d seen in the past few days in her head.  Arcadia Bay was a small town, which lent itself to ecosystem metaphors more readily than big cities did.  Anything that seemed out of the ordinary could have been a clue.

She hit on something.

“When I came in yesterday,” Chloe said, “I saw you talking to someone.  Some guy in a suit.”

“Yeah?”

“Who was it?”

Joyce sighed.  "Some guy who wanted to do construction on the diner.”

Chloe’s eyebrows raised.  “Construction?”

“Yeah,” Joyce said.  “Apparently, City Hall revamped the building code.  They’ve been doing construction in town these past few months, trying to get local businesses to pass muster.  It wouldn’t have cost anything, except the business I would have lost while they were doing it.”

“So you didn’t agree to the construction?”

“Hell no,” Joyce said.  “If Mayor Newman fiddled with the building code, he can come up to me and tell me to my face.  Being as you and him are so chummy, I thought he’d have done that in the first place.”

“We’re not…” Chloe said, before deciding to drop it.  “I remember seeing a business card on the booth table yesterday.  Do you still have it?”

“Yes,” Joyce said.  “I keep every business card I’m given because, well, you never know.  But… do you think he had something to do with this?”

“Maybe.”

Joyce’s brow furrowed.  “But… A guy comes in and tries to do construction, only to burn the place down?  That doesn’t make sense.  It would defeat the purpose.  And he said he was coming in again today.”

Chloe had to concede the point that no, it didn’t make sense.  But still…

“You ever notice how everything in this town in connected?”

* * *

Chloe made a point to drive The Taxi past the car wash over on Tenth and Main.  There was no line.  Chloe remembered a private joke she’d had with the one friend she’d made in Seattle in 2014…

_Praise Gay Jesus,_ Chloe thought, _for He hath better abs than Straight Jesus._

Chloe pumped a five dollar bill into the slot and got the works, as the automated car wash got the sticky remains of the previous day’s red rain off of her canary yellow internal-combustion adopted daughter.

She pulled The Taxi into a parking space outside the car was, and got out to inspect the chassis, eagle-eyed, looking for any minute scratches or dings that the car wash’s automated feelers and cleansers could have given the paint job.

Once she had been satisfied with the fact that the car wash didn’t hurt her baby, Chloe reached into the pocket of her trench coat.  She pulled out the business card Joyce had given her, along with her phone.

_Joseph Thompson of Trident Construction…_

Chloe dialed and waited… Voice mail.

As she took the phone away from her ear, Chloe saw someone across the street in front of the Wendy’s.  He was in his fifties, a crummy gray comb-over flailing madly about his head in the chilly mid-morning wind.  He looked dour and sullen, which clashed wildly with the message on the sandwich board he was wearing:

_REPENT!  THE END IS NIGH!_

Even without the inside info Chloe had on The End and its relative Nighness, Chloe would have bought what he was selling.  No one looked that defeated while expecting a tomorrow to come.

She hung up and dialed another number.

* * *

In the tiny rear room of the Blackwell teacher’s lounge, Max made a pot of coffee.

When she was a little girl, Max had always imagined the teacher’s lounge of DesRosiers Elementary here in Arcadia Bay as some great and wild Grown-Up Land where the teachers did whatever fun stuff grown-ups did.  All the stuff they didn’t let kids do, like drink beer and smoke cigars and fist-fight.  An eight-year-old’s Lighter-and-Softer fantasy of Viking Valhalla.

So ingrained was this in eight-year-old Max’s psyche that the twenty-three-year-old Max was surprised by how let down she was when she saw finally saw the inside of a teacher’s lounge.  It was just a big room near the door, a small room in the back, a couple of tables, a few chairs, and a coffee pot.  There was nothing on the walls to make the place more lively, no flowers for warmth, just the spare utilitarianism of a makeshift hospital in a zombie apocalypse movie.  At least here, in the small rear room, Max could shut off the oppressive overhead fluorescent lights and pretend that the place was cozy.

She took a paper towel out of the steel dispenser above the sink and wiped down some of the water she had spilled when her phone started vibrating.  She wadded up the wet paper towel and tried to make a three-pointer into the plastic wastebasket in the other room (which was a failure, as it bounced off the side of the rim and landed on the linoleum floor) before answering.

It was Chloe.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” said Chloe.  “You doing alright?”

“I’m fine,” Max said.  “How’s Joyce?”

“Taking it in stride.  She’s less angry or sad, and more annoyed.  Which is, well, just her all over.”

“How about you?” Max asked.  “Are _you_ doing okay?”

A pause.

It had taken a long process of trial-and-error when she first started dating Chloe to realize that the young Miss Price did not respond well to hovering.  Chloe needed attention and reassurance, but she needed them on her own terms, and would either shut down or blow up if she wasn’t ready to share.  But Max knew from this pause, which could have filled a book better than any collection of words, that Chloe was sitting on something.  But she’d get to it in her own time, and Max knew that she would have to respect that.

“I’m good,” Chloe said.  “Or as good as I can be.  But one of the reasons I called, um… Have you heard of something called Trident Construction?”

“Umm… No.  Why?”

“Mom talked to someone who worked there yesterday,” Chloe said.  “I figured it might mean something.”

“Okay,” Max said.  “I can keep my ear to the ground and see what comes up.  I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but… y’know… I’ll make a point to be observant.”

“Thanks, Max,” Chloe said.  “I’ve got to go, though.  I’m making a stop that might have something to do with Victoria’s case.”

“Okay.”

“I love you,” Chloe said.

“I love you, too.”

They said their goodbyes and Max hung up the phone.  She looked at the level of the coffee in the pot, before turning to the alcove that separated the smaller room form the larger main one.

Warren had entered, and was dutifully throwing away the paper towel that Max had failed to sink into the wastebasket.  He looked up and their eyes met.

The previous six years had been kind to Warren.  The shaggy hair of his year as a Blackwell student was now cut a little shorter, and infused with some kind of product.  He no longer dressed as though he just threw his clothes at a leaf blower and wore whatever stuck to his body when he stepped in front of it.  He hadn’t gained weight and his face hadn’t changed one iota in the six years since they had both attended this school.  Many of Max’s fellow students at the time wondered just what in the hell Victoria Chase saw in Warren when they had first started going out, but Max knew: It was the investment plan.  And given how many of the female students (and some of the male students, for that matter) checked out Warren’s ass whenever he walked down the hall, it appeared that Victoria’s investment had paid off.

“Hey,” Warren said.

“Hey, Warren.  Um… Chloe’s following a lead that might have to do with Victoria’s case, so… Just so you know.”

“And just so Victoria knows,” Warren said.  “Right.”

Warren sat down.  And given that she had nothing better to do, and considered Warren a friend even though his wife hated her guts, Max sat down as well.

“Are you doing okay?” Warren asked.  “I mean what with the rain and… y’know… the guy who tried to shoot you?”

Max found it in her to smile at this.  “Warren, I’ve been _shot_ before, not just shot _at._ Once you get shot, the people who miss don’t scare you quite as much.  Everyone asks me if I’m okay, and I’m tempted to freak out because I’m not feeling as _not_ okay as everyone expects me to be.”

“Oh,” Warren said.  “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Max said.  “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Well… I did tattle on your girlfriend to you,” Warren said.  “So you can use my apology on that instead.”

Max laughed.  “You didn’t _tattle._ You were trying to be a good husband.  I get it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Max said.  “If Chloe came to me with a problem, I’d have done the same thing.”

“Well, good,” Warren said.

Max got up to pour herself a cup of coffee. “Is it alright if I ask you a personal question?”

“Well, you can ask me the question, and I can tell you both if it’s personal, and whether or not I’ll answer it.”

Max sat back down.  “I know a lot of people have asked you how you landed Victoria.”

Warren smiled and nodded, as though he took pride in the implied insult whenever anyone asked him about it.

“I’m not going to ask that, though,” Max said.

Warren’s smile started to fade away.  “Oh?  What’s the question, then?”

Max set her coffee cup down.  It was too hot.  “How did Victoria land _you?”_

Warren didn’t seem to understand the question.  “Isn’t it obvious?”

“I know she’s beautiful,” Max said.  “I just… You didn’t strike me as a sucker-for-a-pretty-face kind of guy.”

Warren tilted his head.  “As I recall,” Warren said, “I had a thing for _you_ before I had a thing for Victoria.  So that is, like, some _major_ self-effacement, or you don’t know how mirrors work.”

Max blushed.

“Look,” Warren said.  “Victoria is… _definite.”_

_“’Definite?’_ What does that mean?” Max asked.

Warren rubbed his face, looking to Max as though he was trying to get his thoughts on the matter in order.

“Okay,” Warren said.   “It’s like… she’s _immutable.  Unchanging._ Which isn’t to say she doesn’t evolve, but she won’t shift or obscure herself when she does.  Once you get to know her, I mean.  Once she feels comfortable around you, which is tough, but manageable.  And yet, for the life of me, there are still a ton of surprises with her.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.  I knew I needed to propose to her when I realized it would take the rest of my life to find them all.  She said yes… Which is a surprise in and of itself.”

Max smiled.  “I’m glad you’re happy,” she said.

“And I’m glad _you’re_ happy,” said Warren.  “Freaky weather and attempts on your life aside.”

Max smiled again as they both fell into a weird silence.

“Life was a hell of a lot simpler when we talked about movies and video games,” Warren said.

“I remember,” Max said, “that you tried to convince me that there were Christ parallels in _Mass Effect 2.”_

“Because there _are_ Christ parallels in _Mass Effect 2.”_

“I just don’t think coming back from the dead automatically means _‘Christ parallel,’”_ Max said.

“It’s not _just_ about coming back from the dead,” Warren said.  “It’s about the savior of mankind coming back to redeem sin, as evidenced by all the loyalty missions you have to do.”

“I’m still not convinced,” Max said, egging him on, trying to get him to display the old nerd enthusiasm of his late teens.  It was an attempt that was successful.

_“Shepard had twelve disciples,”_ Warren said, rising up in his seat.  “The only difference between Shepard and Jesus is…”

Warren’s geek zealotry was stifled by a noise coming from the hall.  The all-too-familiar chorus that was guaranteed to make an appearance in every school in America…

_“FIGHT!  FIGHT!  FIGHT!  FIGHT!  FIGHT!”_

“Shit,” Warren said as he got out of his chair.

“Good luck,” Max said.

“You can help, y’know.”

“I have faith in you.”

Warren left to break up the fight. Max reached into her pocket to check her phone again.  When she brought her hand up, her wrist dinged the underside of the table, sending her cup of coffee to shatter on the floor.

_“Dammit,”_ Max said, springing up.  She walked over to the sink near the coffee maker to grab a few paper towels out of the dispenser.  She got on her knees and did as best she could to clean up without cutting herself on the remains of the plain white ceramic mug that died a foolish death on the linoleum.

As she threw the soggy paper towels into the wastebasket next to the sink, Max heard soft footsteps on the floor behind her.

“Who started the fight?” Max asked.

No answer.

“Warren?”

Max looked at the polished steel of the paper towel dispenser.  The surface had a few smudges and fingerprints on it, but she could see who was standing behind her, plain as day.

_“_ _Lorraine_ _?”_

The girl who called herself Lorraine Foster slipped a length of orange extension cord around Max’s throat and pulled back hard.


	10. The Best Part of Waking Up

**Chapter 10: The Best Part of Waking Up**

Chloe parked The Taxi across the street from the Sefton house.  She eyed the drab, brown one-story before she fished her phone out of the pocket of her trench coat and tried Joseph Thompson’s number again.

Voicemail.  Still.

She hung up and swiped through her contacts and found a number she had, but didn’t like calling.  There was still more than a sizeable strain of teenage punk rock fuck-offishness within Chloe to hem and haw and hesitate before calling who she was about to call.  But someone burned her mother’s diner to the ground, and bedfellows didn’t get any stranger than the mayor of Arcadia Bay.

_“Chloe!”_ Mayor Newman said, and Chloe could see his warm girth open up arms first like The Ghost of Christmas Future.  _Come in, and know me better, man!_

“Good morning, Mayor Newman.”

“Now, Chloe,” Mayor Newman said.  “You know good and well you can call me Seth.  Now… Is everything going okay?”

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “I mean, all things considered…”

“Of course,” Mayor Newman said.  “What with the… _incident_ yesterday.  And I’m sorry to hear about the Two Whales.  How is Joyce handling that?”

“The insurance will cover everything,” Chloe said, and she inwardly shuddered.  Eighteen-year-old Chloe would have kicked about ten unique colors of shit out of twenty-five-year-old Chloe for talking to a politician about insurance.  “Plus, y’know… it helps having a detective in the family.  Kinda why I wanted to talk to you right now.”

“Of course,” Mayor Newman said.

“Um… Have you heard of an outfit called Trident Construction?”

A pause from the other end of the line.  Chloe couldn’t tell if Newman was trying to remember, or if he was trying to be cagey.

“I have,” Newman said.  “I think the city sub-contracts out to Trident to do the things around town that need doing.”

“Well,” Chloe said, “the reason I ask is because Mom had been in touch with a lawyer for Trident named Joseph Thompson.  They wanted to do construction on the Two Whales.  She said something about, like, changes to the building code or something?”

“Hmm…  I _think_ there was a vote on that last quarter.  I can’t say I remember, and truth be told, the Department of Works doesn’t fill me in on everything.”

“Okay,” Chloe said, “but isn’t it weird that Arcadia Bay is giving out free construction to businesses?  I mean, that usually comes out of the pocket of the business and not the city, doesn’t it?”

“Chloe,” Mayor Newman said, “look around you.  Our little town is on the rise.  Tourism?  Revenue?  Both up _considerably._   And combine that with the fact that we got rid of a ton of crooked cops and waived their pensions, Arcadia Bay has more money than we know what to do with.  If we paid for construction, we did it in the best interests of the town.  Just because I keep running unopposed, it doesn’t mean I don’t like it when people vote for me.”

Chloe scratched her forehead under her fedora.  “I didn’t know small towns were in the business of legislating _‘being nice.’”_

“Well, you _would_ if you came to the City Council meetings.  Now I hate to be rude, but I have an appointment in five…”

“Oh, no,” Chloe said.  “Go ahead.  Don’t let me keep you.”

“Thank you,” Mayor Newman said.  “And keep me posted on whatever you find.”

“I will.”

They said their goodbyes and Chloe hung up, and stared at her phone.

There were a great many things off about that conversation, not the least of which was that Arcadia Bay was handing out free construction work like it was candy.  In any other town she wouldn’t believe it, but Arcadia Bay?  Under Seth Newman?  She’d met the guy, talked to him, and he seemed like the real deal.  So… _maybe?_

It was yet another thing she’d have to keep her eye on.

Chloe checked her hat in the rear view mirror of the The Taxi before she got out.  The wind blew her trench coat back as she crossed the street and made her way up the sidewalk to the front door of the Sefton home.

She rang the doorbell and waited a few moments before a husky man in his early thirties wearing a Seattle Seahawks jersey answered the door.  He seemed a polite fellow, but must have been caught off guard by Chloe’s signature mode of dress.

“Nice hat,” the man said.

“Thanks.  You Paul Sefton?”

“Yeah,” Paul Sefton said.

“My name’s Chloe Price.  I’m a private investigator.  Is it alright if I ask you a few questions?”

* * *

Paul Sefton’s living room was a damn sight tidier than the man himself.  Much like her own coffee table on the day she moved in, his was a glass number that had nary a fingerprint or smudge.  The carpet looked like it had been vacuumed earlier that morning.  The scent of lemon Pledge slithered its way into Chloe’s nostrils.

“Coffee?” Paul asked.

“No, thank you.”

“You’re, uh… You’re that one girl who, like, saved a kidnapped girl some time ago?  Or put a whole bunch of cops away?”

Chloe smiled.  “Both, actually.”

“Yeah,” Paul said.  “I thought your hair would be blue.”

“It _was,”_ Chloe said, “but the sun does funny things to the brand of dye I used unless I kept reapplying it, and it just got to be a pain in the ass.”

“I wouldn’t know what that’s like.  So… How can I help you?”

“Actually,” Chloe said.  “I’m here about your car.”

Paul tilted his head.  “What about it?”

“Well… It was stolen.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s the damnedest thing,” Chloe said.  “Usually when a car is stolen, the owner, y’know, _tells someone about it?_ Preferably a law enforcement agency, who files a report.  You didn’t do that.”

Paul straightened up.  Chloe saw that he could feel pressure coming on.  Chloe never prided herself on her tact, but even if she had, a detective coming into a guy’s house to ask questions would raise said guy’s hackles.  Chloe had her hand ready, itching to rewind time if she fucked up.

“I live in Arcadia Bay,” Paul said.  “I don’t think you could blame me if I said I didn’t trust the cops around here.”

“You’re right,” Chloe said.  “I couldn’t.  The thing is, though, the ABPD tells me that the car was stolen while you were on your shift at work over at the Haverford Asylum.  That’s, what, two hours away?  You would have been reporting to the Highway Patrol or the County Sheriff.  There’s no need to bring in the ABPD at all.  The only reason they got involved was that the car was found wrapped around a tree within the city limits.”

Paul put his hands in his pockets.  “Look, um… I’m not insured.  I didn’t want to run into any trouble.

Chloe folded her arms and looked down her nose at him.  _He’s lying.  But why?_ Chloe opted not to press it.

“That’s… certainly a reason,” Chloe said.  “Hell of a thing about that crash, though.  They tell you about it?”

“They did,” Paul said.  “It’s… _weird.”_

“And you wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?” Chloe asked.

Paul Sefton seemed to cringe.  It was brief, almost subliminal, but it was there.  “No,” he said.  “Can’t say I do.”

_Lying again.  His_ keys _were in the ignition._ Chloe opted to soft-pedal the guy to make him a bit more comfortable.

“I see,” Chloe said.  “Is it alright if I ask you a personal question?  Just out of curiosity?”

“Well,” Paul said, “that depends on the question.”

“It’s just… It’s a hell of a commute from here to Haverford.  Two hours.  You couldn’t find a job in town?  Leonard International has a lot of spots to fill.”

“Yeah, they do,” Paul said, “but Haverford’s a private hospital.  I’m an orderly, and even _I_ make bank.  I can make decent money sweating my ass off on a loading dock, or I can make decent-and-a _-half_ emptying drool cups and keeping people from hurting themselves.”

“Okay,” Chloe said.  “That’s about it on my end.  Thanks for your time.”

Chloe turned toward the door.

“That’s it?” Paul asked.

Chloe stopped and turned back again.

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “That’s it.  Weird stuff like this?  It’s interesting.  But hey, you have a good day.  Sorry I took up so much of your time.  You have a good one, now.”

“Yeah,” Paul said.  “You, too.”

Chloe turned and started to walk to the door.

As soon as she had gotten her private investigator’s license in Washington, Chloe made it a point to binge watch _Columbo_ on her laptop (using Max’s Netflix account, of course).  It just… felt like something she had to so.  As though there were private detective bars or message boards or something, and she didn’t want to miss any of the inside jokes.  She only made it to the end of the first season because, as good as the show was, seventies television was slow as _hell,_ but there was one cool thing that Columbo did on the show that she’d always wanted to try out, but Chloe had never had the opportunity.

Until now…

Chloe turned back to Paul.  “Oh, one more thing.”

Paul Sefton, who had visibly relaxed at the prospect of getting Chloe out of his house, tensed up again.  His eyes went a little wider, and Chloe flattered herself that she could she a vein in his temple start throbbing.

Chloe took a brief moment to fangirl over _herself_ before starting in.

“Haverford?  That’s where you work?”

“Yeah,” Paul Sefton said.

“Cyrus Haverford Memorial?  That the same Haverford?”

“You know any _other_ Haverford Asylum?” Paul asked.  Chloe could see that he was getting impatient.

“So you know Nathan Prescott.”

Chloe dropped that bomb, not even raising her inflection to make it a question.  She kept her eyes peeled on Paul, making sure to note every last detail of his response.

He blinked a couple of times, and then looked up, like her was trying to remember that name from a sea of names that his daily work routine brought him into contact with.  But it was a little _too_ pronounced.  Like he was a third grader in a school play being told by his beleaguered English teacher/drama director to _“look like you’re remembering something!”_

Whatever came out of Paul Sefton’s mouth next was going to be a lie.

“I can’t say I’m on first name basis with the patients,” Paul said.

Chloe kept the smile off of her face.  She didn’t say that Nathan was one of the patients at Haverford, but she didn’t want to raise any red flags.  Paul Sefton going to the guy who was telling him (or _paying_ him) to lie and telling that guy what was up would have put a _serious_ wrench in things going forward.  In the pursuit of solving the increasingly elaborate mystery at her feet, Chloe took it upon herself to play dumb.

“I knew him back in the day,” Chloe said.  “Again, you have a good one.  I’ll let myself out.”

“Have a nice day,” Paul said, slightly slouching in relief.

As she walked to the door, Chloe went over her conversation with Paul in her head, trying to see if there were any points of ingress for which to use her powers and gain any more relevant information.  She found none.  Chloe closed the front door behind her and started to walk back to her car, marveling, not because she had found a steady job on the right side of the law, but a job that she was good at and held her interest.  She took the advice she had read in another timeline, in another life, and said to herself…

“If this isn’t nice, then I don’t know what is.”

Hindsight being twenty-twenty, Chloe could have kicked her own ass for saying such a thing, even if just to herself.  Chloe was in the middle of the street when her phone rang.

It was Trevor.

“Hello?”

“Chloe,” Trevor said, “something’s happened to Max…”

* * *

_Thirty minutes earlier…_

Max clawed at Lorraine’s hands.  She had clipped her nails earlier that morning and Max, whose supply of oxygen to the brain was dwindling by the second, couldn’t find it in her to curse herself.

Lorraine gave the extension cord a savage jerk, and Max was momentarily lifted off of her feet, only to land crookedly on one ankle, which could not support her weight.  She dropped to one knee, and Lorraine had to bend over to finish the act.

Max’s temples throbbed, her vision started blurring, whatever breath she could exhale came through her nose in stifled and abbreviated snorts.  She could _feel_ herself turning purple.  Lorraine lowered her mouth to Max’s ear and whispered…

_“I’ve waited years for this…”_

And another sharp jerk, bringing the extension cord painfully under Max’s jaw, digging into her windpipe.

Max’s thoughts were leaving her.  The baser parts of her brain used her eyes to scan her surroundings, these last sights of her life on Earth before the long, cold dark, hoping for some kind of opportunity.

She spied the sink.

Max got one foot underneath of her, grabbed Lorraine’s wrists, and pulled forward as hard as she could.

She banged the side of her head against the wooden doors underneath the sink, but she managed Lorraine into impacting her own forehead with the sharp edge of the counter, which stunned her, knocked her off of her feet, and released the extension cord from around Max’s throat.

Max breathed in, and for the briefest of moments, it was as though color came back into the world, but the inevitable exhale came with a battalion of ragged coughs that sent her chest into spasms, over which she barely heard Lorraine saying “Awwww, _fuck.”_

As Max saw Lorraine get back to her feet and advance on her, Max’s hand pawed at the surface of the counter, looking for any kind of advantage at all.

She found it.

In the first violent act of Maxine Caulfield’s life, she grabbed the handle of the pot of coffee that she had freshly made a few minutes before, and swung with all of the strength she could channel into her arm.

The coffee pot exploded across Lorraine Foster’s face in a storm of broken glass and boiling brown fluid.

Lorraine _shrieked_ in ungodly pain as she was knocked onto her ass.  She scrambled to her feet, still screaming, and bolted for the door.

After a moment, Max dropped the handle of the coffee pot.  She felt tired all over, and the sudden influx of oxygen was making her woozy.  Her breathing sounded wheezy and her arm was killing her.  Max didn’t work out, and she was convinced she had pulled a muscle breaking the coffee pot across Lorraine’s face.

It was as though an animal had taken control of her brain for the past… what… _minute?_ Minute-and-a- _half?_ Max was a pacifist, and though she had often wondered what would happen if violence came to her door, she had always stopped shy of carrying pepper spray, or taking self-defense classes.

But _this?_ Even though Lorraine was trying to kill her for what _ever_ fucking reason, Max had inevitably disfigured this girl for life, and no doubt pissed her off further.  Max’s action hero moment didn’t make her feel badass.  She felt… _sick._

Max looked at the mess that she and Lorraine had made, and in the middle of the sea of glass shards and rapidly cooling coffee, she saw a drop of blood, _Lorraine_ _’s_ blood, spreading its crimson tendrils outwardly into the puddle of cheap Folgers.

_I did that…_

Max passed out.  The contact her head made with the linoleum made sure she stayed that way for a while.  The last thing she saw before the world swam away was Warren’s feet entering the room. 


	11. Hoodslam

**Chapter 11: Hoodslam**

Trevor took great pains to impress upon Chloe that yes, Max was a little banged up, but was otherwise fine, and that Chloe could take her home as soon as she got to the hospital.  All that was needed on Chloe’s end was a shirt from home, as the one Max had been wearing at the time of Lorraine’s attack had been ruined.

As Chloe drove from the Sefton house to her own, her brain was screaming at itself, trying to get to where she was going as fast as she could, while still attempting to keep The Taxi at the limit, as getting pulled over would only make the trip longer.

She barely remembered parking behind Blackwell, and didn’t even notice along the long power-walk from the parking lot to the house that the place seemed to be deserted.  It was only one in the afternoon.

Chloe grabbed a couple of things off of the hangers in the closet at random, and marched back to The Taxi, during which her skin itched with both worry and rage.  Chloe tried to conjure (in Technicolor, with Dolby Digital Surround Sound) the gruesome routine of invasive graphic violence that she would visit upon the person who did this to Max.

This mental floorshow continued as Chloe drove to the hospital, parked The Taxi in the adjacent parking garage, and made her way inside.  She asked for directions from the receptionist and made her way to the second floor.

Standing outside Room 288 was Joyce, Trevor, Mayor Newman, and Principal Grant.  They had been talking quietly and ardently to each other until they all happened to see Chloe at the same time, at which point they stopped and regarded her as though she was the one bringing the water back to a group of passengers crashed in the desert.

“What are you all doing out here?” Chloe asked.

“She wouldn’t let us in,” Joyce said.  “She wanted to talk to you first.”

Chloe nodded to all of them and entered the hospital room.

The moment she saw Max in the hospital bed, the rage and anger that had been careening back and forth inside Chloe stilled.  Max was looking out the window, so lost in thought that she hadn’t noticed Chloe enter the room.  She was lying above the covers of the bed in a hospital gown, her slacks still on and her feet in just her socks.  There was a raw strip of skin around her throat and her left arm was bandaged above the elbow.

Max finally saw Chloe and, without smiling, held her arms out.

Chloe went to her.  She dropped the bag of clothes by the bed and gently put her arms around Max while letting herself get wrapped into Max’s grip.  Their lips met and their eyes closed.

But when that small moment of paradise ended, and they were face to face again, Chloe started shaking.  Someone tried to kill Max, and _she_ was the one who was nervous?  This thought drowned out everything else in her head, and as she sat one leg on the bed next to Max, she checked all the drawers in her brain for something to say.

“I want to be the supportive girlfriend, here,” Chloe said.

“You _are_ the supportive girlfriend.  You’re doing fine.”

Chloe nodded in a way that showed she didn’t believe that.  “Yeah, but the thing I like to do is listen when you have a problem.  So I know what words to pick.  I… kinda can’t move until you do.”

There was a giggle in Max’s voice, even though her face refused to crack so much as a grin.  “I hate to break it to you, Chloe, but I don’t have anything to say.”

Chloe tilted her head, as if to say _C’mon, now._ “I _know_ you, Max.  You used to keep a journal.  Everything that happens to you, you have the words for.  Which means you have a speech prepared.”

Max turned back to the window and was quiet for a bit.  Chloe waited.

Max finally said “I remember… It was Spring Break at Blackwell, and I wanted to go to Portland with Kate.  I asked you if you wanted to go, but you said you had personal reasons…”

“Yeah,” Chloe said, almost blushing.  “I… kinda… can’t get _comfortable_ around Kate.”

Max looked at Chloe as though she had just cussed her out in a foreign tongue.  “What do you _mean_ you can’t get comfortable around Kate?  She’s _Kate._ She’s the only person in the history of ever who’s more adorable than the _actual_ baby rabbit she used to own.”

Chloe rubbed her forehead.  “I swear.  Like… a _lot_.  I don’t… I can’t do that around Kate.”

Max’s eyebrows knitted together.  “It’s okay to swear around Kate.  I do it.  She won’t break.”

“Yeah, but just thinking about it _feels_ weird, though.”

Max sighed and looked back at the window again.  “Anyway.  Kate and I went down to Portland, we went to a couple of tea shops, we went to Powell’s, and we were just bumming around downtown.  We… we passed by this pet store, right?  And in the window was this little baby pug.  And… and Kate squeed so hard that she started crying.”

Chloe grinned at this.

“And because she started crying, _I_ started crying.  Just two teenage girls standing outside a pet store, crying at how cute the puppy in the window was.”

Max looked at Chloe, and she was trying her hardest to smile at this.  When she couldn’t she looked back at the window again.

“I disfigured a girl today.  Permanently.  And that pet store… just seems really far away right now.”

After a pause, Chloe asked “How?”

“Lorraine Foster, one of my students, tried to strangle me with an extension cord.  I broke free.  She came after me, and I broke a fresh pot of coffee across her face.”

Chloe successfully combated the urge to tell Max how _fucking hardcore_ that was.

“Max… She tried to kill you.”

“I know that.  I know that should matter more than it should, but it doesn’t… And I know that when the two of you meet, and the two of you _will_ meet, you will kill her for what she’s done.”

Max looked back at Chloe with challenge in her eyes.  Chloe knew what it meant.  It wasn’t a judgment on Chloe’s character _per se,_ but more a preemptive grief for the woman Chloe was at that moment, soon to be replaced by the woman Chloe would become after she had amassed a body count.  She knew that Max thought she would be justified in the long run, if push came to shove and this Lorraine Foster girl gave them no choice, but it had been said by many a man and woman in the course of human events that killing changes someone forever.  Looking into Max’s eyes, Chloe became frightened of who she’d be after she put Lorraine down.  Almost as frightened about what would happen if she didn’t.

It was at that moment that a nurse came in.

“Hi,” the nurse said.  “I’m just here to take your blood pressure.”

“Okay,” Max said.  Chloe got off of the bed and made her way around the other side to stand sentry.

“What happened to you?” the nurse asked as she applied the blood pressure cuff to Max’s arm.

“Someone tried to strangle me,” Max said.

“I see,” the nurse said.  She pointed to the bandages on Max’s other arm.  “Those don’t look like what you get when someone tries to strangle you.”

“Well, Max said, “I smashed a pot of coffee across their face.  Then I passed out, but when I did, I landed in some of the shards from the coffee pot.”

“Jesus,” Chloe said.  “How bad is it?”

“I dunno,” Max said.  “By the time I came to, I was already bandaged up.  It ruined my shirt, so…”

“Oh,” Chloe said, and picked the plastic grocery bag of clothes off the floor.  She handed them to Max as the nurse removed the blood pressure cuff.

“Wowser,” Max said as she got the shirts out.  “Blasts from the past get neither blastier nor pastier.”

“Jesus _, really?”_ Chloe asked.

“Painkillers.  You shush.”

Chloe looked at the shirts that she had absent-mindedly raided from the closet.  She had gotten a gray hoodie and Max’s old pink “Jane Doe” tank-top.

“It _is_ the Max Caulfield special,” Chloe said, trying to play it like she did it on purpose.

The nurse stopped what she was doing to look at Max.  “Max Caulfield?”

Max looked at the nurse.  “Yeah?”

“Your name is _Max Caulfield?”_

“Yes,” Max said, and Chloe could tell she was gearing up to deal with a fan.  Chloe herself wasn’t so sure.

The nurse looked up and nodded, smiling in such a way that Chloe guessed it was just to herself.

“What is it?” Max asked.

The nurse came back to Earth.  “What?  Oh, uh… It’s nothing.”

“Enlighten us on this nothing,” Chloe said.

“Oh, well… Y’know… Max _Caulfield._ Like in _Grease 2.”_

One of the things Chloe loved about Max was how confusion could play out on her face. It was just fucking _adorable._

“What do you mean _‘like in_ Grease 2?’” Max asked.

“That’s the name of the lead,” the nurse said.  “The one who’s in love with Michelle Pfieffer.”

“The lead male character in _Grease 2_ is named Max Caulfield?”

“No, not the character,” the nurse said.  “The _actor.”_

Chloe could not easily describe the look on Max’s face.  It was like someone had come up to Max with the missing half of a medallion that proved they were long lost siblings, and that someone liked to pee in mailboxes.  She looked at Chloe as though life had betrayed her.

“Did… Did my _parents_ know about this?  This is just _weird…”_

This put Chloe at a crossroads.

Steering Max away from this would put her mind back on the fact that someone tried to kill her, and that she did something she wasn’t cool with in the slightest to keep that from happening.  But rubbing in the fact that Max shared a name with an actor that was in a movie that everyone hated and yet, paradoxically, only four people had seen to get her mind off of it just seemed petty and juvenile.  Chloe wondered what constituted _“Cheering Max Up”_ on a day this awful.

Chloe made her decision.

“It’s not just weird,” Chloe said before she put her hands out and wiggled them.  _“It’s electrifyin’!”_

The look of heightened betrayal on Max’s face made Chloe laugh.  Max plucked the fedora off of Chloe’s head and put it on her own, summoning all the dignity and pomp of an elderly English dowager when she said…

“You _shush!”_

* * *

“There is no Lorraine Foster,” Trevor said.

After the nurse had left and Max changed into her tank top and hoodie (Chloe had made a point to fake-yell _“Boobs!”_ when Max took the hospital gown off, which made Max smile), she bade the gallery of concerned bystanders outside the hospital room to come in.  Mayor Newman, Joyce, Principal Grant, and Trevor gathered in separate parts of the room.

“What do you _mean_ there’s no Lorraine Foster?” Joyce asked.

Trevor looked at Principal Grant like she was the guilty party in playground scuffle.  She collected herself, and began.

“All the records and references pertaining to a Lorraine Foster are fake.  The transcripts from the schools she went to, the phone numbers, all of it.  I’d be surprised if Lorraine Foster was actually her real name.”

The room fell into silence as all assembled tried to believe it.

“How does this _happen?”_ Chloe asked.  “None of the people at Blackwell spotted it when she was admitted?”

“I checked with the staff,” Principal Grant said.  “They say that the numbers provided during the admission process had people at the other end of them, but we tried them again this morning, and they were all disconnected.  I don’t know how she did this, but she didn’t do it alone.”

A horrible thought entered Chloe’s brain, but Max, smart woman that she was, gave voice to it.

“She was smuggled into that school just to get to me,” Max said.  “She said that she’d waited for years to kill me, but she’s eighteen years old, and I’ve spent most of her life in Seattle.  I don’t know what I could have done to piss her off so much.”

Another silence fell on the room, this time broken by Mayor Newman.

“You do realize that this isn’t going to stand,” Mayor Newman said to Principal Grant.  “I’ll have your job for this.”

Principal Grant just seemed to deflate on the spot.  “You’re too late,” she said.  “The Blackwell Board of Trustees called me an hour ago after an emergency meeting when the news of this broke, and asked for my resignation.  Mister Michener will be taking over.”

Chloe remembered Mister Michener from her own abbreviated time at Blackwell.  History teacher.  _Very_ long-winded

“My last act as Principal of Blackwell Academy,” Ex-Principal Grant said, “was to cancel all classes until this girl is caught.”

Michelle Grant looked at Max.  “I’m sorry, Miss Caulfield.”

Chloe looked at Max, who seemed incapable of saying anything at all.  Then she looked back at Michelle Grant, who nodded at all of them under an invisible hood of defeat, and bowed out of the room.

“Trevor?” Mayor Newman asked.  Trevor looked back at him.

“I hope you don’t plan on getting sleep any time soon.  This is no longer your number one priority.  This is your _only_ priority.”

And with that, Mayor Newman left as well.  The four people still left in the room stared at the door he just went through.

“That man,” Trevor said, “is a prick.”

Chloe, Max, and Joyce looked at Trevor.  “He doesn’t seem _so_ bad,” Joyce said.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure his heart’s in the right place,” Trevor said, “but ever since all the dirty cops went bye-bye, he comes in every day and micromanages the shit out of the department.  It’s what we get for electing an insurance salesman to be our mayor.”

“He used to sell insurance?” Chloe asked.

“Oh, he still does,” Trevor said.  “He does both.  Being mayor pays dick, apparently.”

“Well,” Joyce said, “at least he didn’t legislate himself a pay-raise like the Senators in Washington do.”

“And that’s a point in his favor,” Trevor said, and his eyes found Chloe’s.

“But still, though,” Trevor said.  “I guess you can’t fight city hall.”

* * *

“Is this really necessary?” Max asked as Chloe wheeled Max to the elevator in a wheelchair.

“Doctor’s orders,” Chloe said.  “You get the wheelchair treatment until we get to the front door.”

“Is there, like, a little corral for the wheelchairs outside?” Max asked.  “Like for shopping carts at the supermarket?”

“I don’t know,” Chloe said.  “I didn’t look.”

Chloe pressed the button for the elevator, and the door immediately opened.  She wheeled Max inside.

“I just wish someone _told_ me,” Max said as the elevator doors closed.

“About Lorraine?”

“No,” Max said.  “About _Grease 2.”_

Chloe smiled.  “Is that still bugging you?”

“It’s just kind of weird that it took me twenty-three years to find this out.  I mean, if I knew a kid who had the same name as the guy who played in _Grease 2,_ I would have made that kid’s life a living hell.  I mean I _wouldn’t_ have, but… you know what I mean.  No one even made fun of me in school about that.”

“Exactly,” Chloe said.  “Because no one’s seen _Grease 2.”_

“The nurse did,” Max said.

“That just means she lost.”

“Lost what?”

“Lost _life,_ Max.  She saw _Grease 2_ and lost at  _life.”_

The elevator doors opened, and Chloe heard a monstrous, high-pitched racket coming from outside.

“What the hell is _that?”_ Max asked.

Max got out of the wheelchair and accompanied Chloe to the automatic doors that led out to the hospital parking lot.  Through those doors, they could see a doctor and a patient staring up, slack-jawed, at the sky.  Once they got outside, Max and Chloe saw what they were staring at.

Birds.

Seemingly every bird in Arcadia Bay was flying in a clockwise spiral above the town, screeching and squawking at such a high pitch that Chloe and Max couldn’t hear themselves think.  So massive and dense was this spiral of birds that it was doing a very good job at blotting out the sun.  Max put her hands up to her ears.  And then…

Nothing.

All of the birds in the sky fell silent instantaneously.  The only assurance that Chloe hadn’t simply gone deaf was that she could hear her boots shift on the pavement.  And in this silence, one thought announced itself in Chloe’s brain with neon lights and blaring sirens.

_This is the second plague._

**THUMP!**

A robin fell a few feet away from them, its wings splayed out, feathers rising a few inches into the air from the impact with the pavement.  Chloe put two and two together.

_“EVERYONE GET INSIDE, NOW!”_

The doctor, the patient, and the one woman who was gawping in the parking lot didn’t need to be told twice.  They booked it through the automatic doors shortly after Chloe and Max did, as a rainbow of dead birds started falling from the sky, denting cars and shattering windows.

Chloe could see an old man who had been between the parking garage and the hospital trying to hobble his way toward the doors.  He tripped on the curb and fell from the concrete awning that was protecting him to the unprotected parking lot.  He tried to get up, but a blue jay connected with his back, flattening him to the pavement.  A falling owl took him in his bald head, and he stopped moving altogether.

Chloe moved toward the automatic doors, but Max’s hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“Chloe, no.”

Chloe got her hand ready.  “Chloe, _yes.”_

**_Booommm…_ **

The shimmer.  The counter-clockwise spiral burning out.  The birds rising from the air.  The old man getting up and reverse-hobbling back toward the parking garage.

Chloe let go and booked it outside before Max could stop her.

She made it a point to stay under the concrete awning as she made it to the old man.  She took him by the arm.

“It’s alright,” Chloe said.  "Just stay under here, and you’ll be fine.  I’ll help you.”

Chloe and the old man slowly made their way down the sidewalk as the birds kept falling with sickening thumps feet away.  They entered the automatic doors, and the assembled small audience of bystanders took a small moment of time away from being terrified to help the old man further into the hospital.  Chloe leaned on the brick wall and nursed the headache that was forming in her skull.

“Chloe?”

Chloe looked up and saw Max with fear in her eyes as the sound of falling birds from outside abated.

“What?” Chloe asked.

“Your nose.”

Chloe used her index finger to wipe her upper lip.  It came away with a glaze of blood.


	12. The Ballad of Sunshine Ray

**Chapter 12: The Ballad of Sunshine Ray**

Forty-five seconds.

The plague of dead birds falling on Arcadia Bay, Oregon lasted for a grand total of forty-five seconds.

Given both the speed and spiral pattern in which they were flying, the corpses of the birds were more or less _thrown_ into the town, causing significantly more damage than if they had simply fallen.

The ballpark figure offered by Mayor Seth Newman (who moonlit as an insurance salesman) pertaining to the amount of property damage incurred was nine-hundred-fifty thousand dollars.  Not bad, in the grand scheme of things.

Strangely, there were reports from some residential areas claiming that some of the birds that fell on this bizarre Wednesday afternoon were not, in fact, native to Arcadia Bay, or even Oregon for that matter.  Fifty-five-year-old Lila James posted pictures to her Facebook wall of a Turkey Vulture that had bounced off the shed in her backyard.

The _Arcadia Bay Beacon_ attempted to contact Warren Graham for a statement regarding an explanation for this unusual phenomenon, but as the press deadline loomed, Mister Graham was unable to be reached for comment.

* * *

Max saw that Chloe parked The Taxi in the parking garage, free from the scourge of falling birds, and if Max knew her girlfriend as well as she thought she did, then Chloe was thanking the Baby Jesus for small favors.

They had gingerly made their way to the parking garage from the hospital, sidestepping the odd dead bird, Chloe’s arm around Max’s shoulder, both of Max’s arms around Chloe’s waist. 

They wordlessly got into The Taxi, and before they buckled their seatbelts, Max made a point of leaning over into the driver’s seat and putting her arms around Chloe.  Chloe returned the gesture, but her arms felt slack around Max’s frame.  When she pulled away from Chloe, Max saw Chloe’s eyes.  They were dazed and lost, and a rusty corona of dried blood still ringed her pale nostrils.

Chloe turned the key in the ignition, and The Taxi’s radio started blaring _Skulls_ by Misfits (identifiable because dating Chloe Price meant immersing one’s self in The Great American Punk Songbook).  The music muffled the odd crunch of dead bird beneath The Taxi’s tires.

As parking lot gave way to street (and Misfits gave way to Tacocat, a band that Max had actually recommended to Chloe), Max looked at Chloe and tried to figure out what to do.  Ever since the rain of birds stopped, Chloe had been… _distant._ And it didn’t take Max long to figure out why.  Wielding a terrible power while seeing someone you loved in constant danger was not an alien concept to Max Caulfield.  Indeed, for a week of her life in another timeline, that had been the center of her existence.

The difference here was that Max had lacked a greater context for her actions.  At the time, the world seemed threatening, yes, but those threats were seen through a younger and more naïve eye, and she didn’t know her actions had had a tangible mass effect until she was at Koch’s Folly, figuring out a way to get both herself and Chloe out of hot water.

But now, six years later, seeing the woman she loved so lost, feeling her freshly strangled throat click as she swallowed, feeling the throb in her cut-up and stitched arm, Max realized that the threats hadn’t gone away.  They had grown up with them.  They’d gotten bigger and hungrier.

Max knew Chloe needed her now.  Max also knew that overt gestures of consolation would cause Chloe to either blow up, saying or doing something that she would wind up kicking herself harder for later, or she would shut down even worse than she already was.

Max only knew one football term, which was the _Hail Mary:_ a last ditch attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

She took her phone out of the pocket of her gray hoodie, and brought up IMDB.

“Yup,” Max said.  “Maxwell Caulfield played Michael Carrington in _Grease 2.”_

Chloe looked at Max, and then back to the road.  Max kept scrolling through Maxwell Caulfield’s list of credits.

“He was in episodes of _Castle… Modern Family… NCIS…”_

Chloe didn’t say anything.  Max scrolled until she hit the jackpot.

“Holy shit,” Max said.  _“He was Rex Manning in Empire Records!”_

Chloe came back to life.  “No _shit?”_

“Yeah!” Max said.  “Max Caulfield was Rex Manning!  _I was Rex Manning!”_

Chloe smiled in spite of herself.  “You’re getting yourself confused with an actor you didn’t know existed until an hour ago.”

Max made sure to heighten the look of shock on her face.  “That’s a _terrible_ thing to say on Rex Manning Day!”

Chloe laughed…

…and laughed…

…and had to pull The Taxi over to the side of the street she was laughing so hard.

Chloe’s face turned red and tears started streaming down her cheeks.  The smile on Max’s own face faded.  She knew damn well what she’d said wasn’t that funny.

Max slowly realized that the laughing was giving way to racking sobs.  The one thing that had seemed bright and cheery for Chloe today was gone, and she couldn’t get it back.  She was stuck in a world so dark and malicious, and she mourned the loss of the day’s one moment of humor, made all the more poignant by its brevity.

She unbuckled her seatbelt and put her hands on Chloe’s face, wiping away her tears.  And as Chloe’s arms wrapped tight around her, Max kissed her newly dampened cheeks.

“Chloe,” Max said.  “This is beatable.  Trust me, I know.”

Chloe’s voice was thick when she said “You had to die for it.”

“I didn’t die,” Max said.  “I’m still here.”

“You had to sacrifice yourself,” Chloe said.  “Max… I’m fucking terrified.”

Max looked into Chloe’s wet blue eyes, mining her thoughts for the words to say, coming up with nothing but worthless rock.

“I love you,” Chloe said.  “But I’m not _like_ you.  I’m not… I’m not…”

Whatever insight into her character Chloe was about to reveal was forever lost to time as the bleat of a car horn sounded behind them.

Max and Chloe immediately snapped to and turned around.  Through The Taxi’s rear window, they could see a red Honda Accord parked on the side of the street behind them.  The plastic thing around the Oregon plate (the number being **_MNDYNTRW_** ) said it was a rental from Hertz.

Chloe wiped her face with her hand.  “Stay here,” Chloe said.

Though Max appreciated Chloe’s concern, it didn’t stop her from getting out of the car first.  She could hear Chloe’s muffled curses as she tried to get her seatbelt off.

As the two of them stood outside The Taxi, the Accord’s driver revealed himself.  He was a black man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties.  Slightly pudgy and wearing a salmon polo shirt over black slacks.

“Can we help you?” Chloe asked, and Max marveled at how quickly Chloe could put her game face on.

“I gotta say,” the driver said, “Arcadia Bay is pretty fucked up.  Come for the Sasquatch, stay for dead birds and the rain of blood.”

“It’s part of the charm,” Max said.

“Yeah,” said Chloe.  “The tourist brochures use the word _‘rustic,’_ but I don’t think it does our humble little corner of Oregon justice.”

“No doubt,” the driver said.  “You got any ideas on how this weird-ass town got so weird-ass?”

“Beats me,” Chloe said.  “God just loves us, I guess.”

The driver got his phone out of his slacks and started to bring something up.

“Now, see,” the driver said, “we’re not gonna be getting off on the highest of notes if you start in on vagaries and half-truths when we’re _just_ getting to know each other.”

The driver held the screen of his phone out toward Max and Chloe and began to walk toward them.  Max didn’t see this guy as a threat, and judging from the fact that she didn’t start swearing or throwing elbows, she assumed Chloe reached the same conclusion.

Only when the driver reached arms length from Chloe did he press the play button on the screen of his phone.

The first thing that the video on the phone made evident was that, for whatever reason, the driver was across the street from the front doors of the hospital when the birds started falling from the sky.

The second thing was that time-travel looked weird on a smartphone’s camera. 

The old man that Chloe had saved in the parking lot appeared as a pixilated lesion in the image until Chloe made contact with him outside, and time reasserted itself.  There was a ghostly after-image of Chloe behind the transparent hospital doors for a few seconds.  Max herself was blurry, as though the camera was trying to reconcile her doing two things at once.

Chloe rewound time to save that man.  Max fought conflicting emotions.  She was glad Chloe did the right thing.  She was upset that Chloe had drawn her own blood to do it.  She was more than a little peeved at being the one on the other side of the time travel hijinks for a change. 

Max looked from the phone to Chloe, who had come over a shade paler.

“I was at the Subway across the street from the hospital, trying to grab a sandwich when the birds fell,” the driver said, “Glad I was.  Because I think that you two have a better idea of how weird this town is than anyone.”

* * *

The three of them went to Sharky’s to talk.  It was closed after the bird weirdness, but the chairs and the tables on the patio were still out, and none assembled figured that Sharky’s owners would mind if they sat a spell.

“My name is Michael Francis Luder,” the driver said as he got his phone back out.  “You may have heard of me.”

Max looked to her left, and Chloe was as dumbfounded as she was.  “No,” Max said.  “I can’t say that I have.”

_“Really?”_ Luder asked.  _“World Most Bizarre?_ On Youtube?”

“Do you make cat videos?” Chloe asked.

“Nope.”

“Are you Adam from WhatCulture?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m _not_ Adam from WhatCulture.”

“Then I haven’t heard of you,” Chloe said.  Max smiled.

Luder leaned back in his chair.  “I do videos on the paranormal.  Strange shit like haunted houses and serial killers.  Arcadia Bay, though?  This is my first location shoot.”

“And what brings you here?”  Max asked.

“Well, I’d planned to do it for a while, now,” Luder said.  “Because of the Sasquatch.  Viewers love that shit.”

“Of course,” Chloe said.

“But I did a little digging around online abut the town, and, well…”

“And, well, what?” Max asked.

“I mean, _apart_ from the Sasquatch and the fucked up weather?” Luder asked.  He looked from side to side as though he was trying to make sure he wasn’t overheard, even though they were the only ones on the patio, or on the block upon which Sharky’s was located, for that matter.  The beach caught Max’s eye.  The tide was bringing in an assortment of dead birds.

“Have you ever noticed,” Luder asked, “that time is a little… _funny_ around here?”

Max and Chloe looked at each other.  Their faces were impassive, but even from that, they managed to communicate to each other that they had to play dumb.

“How do you mean?” Chloe asked.  “Funny how?”

“It’s a few little things, not a lot of which I can substantiate…”

“Which means that there’s something you _can_ substantiate?” Chloe asked.

“Anecdotally, yeah,” Luder said.  “I mean, I conducted an interview.”

“About what?” Max asked.

“Have you ever heard of someone named Sunshine Ray?”

“Yeah,” Max said.  “He’s a missing person’s case here in town.  He disappeared sometime in the seventies, right?”

Luder smiled.  “Points to Gryffindor.”

Chloe looked at Max.  “How the hell did you know _that?”_

Max tried to broach the subject as delicately as possible.  Max had learned about Sunshine Ray six years ago, trying to research missing persons cases in Arcadia Bay in an attempt to find the then-hoped-to-be-alive Rachel Amber.  The effect of saying Rachel’s name around Chloe was always the same: visible, immediate, and brief melancholy, followed by Chloe going stone-faced, trying to look like everything was normal.  Max, in an effort to respect her girlfriend and not drag her down, had taken it upon herself to not mention Rachel around Chloe at all, no matter how vehement Chloe’s insistence that she was past all of it.  She wasn’t.  And she never would be.  Some things people just don’t _get_ over.

“I tooled around on the internet one night,” Max said, telling the truth without getting to the heart of it.  “You don’t forget a name like Sunshine Ray.”

Chloe turned back to Luder.  “So you did an interview with someone on this Sunshine Ray guy.  What about?”

Luder leaned back into his seat, folded his hands over his stomach, and smiled.  Max had seen this wind-up before, on numerous guys who, when asked for their favorite movie, food, photographer, discipline of martial arts, or what-have-you, had meticulous mental notes prepared and annotated.

“Do you know what the three most beautiful words in the English language are?” Luder asked.

Neither Chloe nor Max said anything.  Max wondered what Chloe’s three favorite words were.  If she were a betting woman, Max would have wagered they were _weed, punk,_ and _titties._

Luder, sensing no answer would come, leaned forward with a gleam in his eye.

_“Legend has it…”_

* * *

_December 12, 1973_

Fifteen-year-old Sue Putnam walked her bike up the craggy and decrepit sidewalk by the busy section of street on this blistering cold and unfathomably gray winter afternoon, towards her father’s new business venture…

A little out-of-the-way eatery that he had dubbed _“The Two Whales Diner.”_

Sue’s father Bud, who had summoned her here to wash dishes on this forbidding Saturday afternoon, had cashed in his stock options at the logging company he’d worked at and used the money to build and open the Two Whales.  Sue’s mother Florence thought Bud was nuts, but Bud thought that a place that fishermen could come to get some eggs and some coffee after they came back to shore would do some good for the town and set the family up securely.  Bud had been right on both counts.

The diner had opened late that past June ahead of the Fourth of July rush, and business had ranged from steady to outstanding.  The former was the case as Sue entered the diner after she had chained up her bike in the parking lot.  Her dad was behind the counter, apron on and smile plastered on his face.  There was old Jasper Kendall in the corner, putting his teeth in to attack his plate of waffles.

And then… there was Sunshine Ray.

No one knew Sunshine Ray’s real name.  Mom had said that he had emerged from the pavement behind the McDonalds fully-formed the day The Beatles first dropped acid.  But Sunshine Ray was one of the last of a dying breed.  The man was a hippie, and the agedness of the movement showed in the man himself.  His shaggy black mane was run through with mercenary fibers of gray around his freckled bald spot.  Guesses at the man’s age ran from thirty to fifty.  But Sunshine Ray had seemed harmless enough, although not without his eccentricities.

“I’m leaving town,” Sunshine Ray said to Dad.

“Are you?” Dad asked, humoring the man.

“That’s right… I’ll be back, though.  It’s just to go to a concert.”

“Who’s playing?”

Sunshine Ray spread his arms out wide.  _“King Harvest!”_

Dad smiled.  “Not really my sound.”

“Then you need to _make_ it your sound, because… _man…_ but I need to know how to get to Portland, though.”

Dad saw Sue and his expression held a great relief.  Like he was about to use her as a human shield to get away from this guy.  _I thought fathers were supposed to protect their children._

“Sue, honey?” Dad asked.  “Would you mind ringing up ol’ Ray, here?  I have to bring the fries up.”

“Sure,” Sue said, trying to hide her displeasure as Dad disappeared through the door separating the dining area from the kitchen.  Sue went to the cash register, putting her in point-blank range of Sunshine Ray and the pungent aroma that seemed to accompany him everywhere.  He smelled like the visitor’s dugout at the baseball field two blocks from the Putnam family house.

Sunshine Ray dug a single out of his wallet.  Sue took it and opened the cash register.

“Hey,” Sunshine Ray said.  “You know the way to Portland?  I need to get to a concert.”

Sue looked him up and down.  His clothes were dirty, as was his face, and there was a blot of fresh mustard on the lapel of his bright green blazer from the hamburger he had just finished eating.

“We sell maps over there,” Sue said, pointing to the far wall that had the road maps displayed in a small wire shelf.

Sunshine Ray nodded and smiled, as though he had just understood a bit of foreign language.  This smile lasted until he saw the splotch of mustard on his lapel.  His face curdled and he looked at Sue with something in the vicinity of true sadness.

“The mustard betrayed me,” Sunshine Ray said.  He got up, pocketed the coins that Sue had given him in change, and left the diner.  Sue picked up Sunshine Ray’s plate and put it in the tray behind her, only to turn around… and see that Sunshine Ray left his wallet on the counter.

_“Shit,”_ Sue said to herself.  She grabbed the wallet and bolted out of the diner.  The cold air hit her dead in the face, causing all of the moisture in her nose to freeze instantly.  She looked around.

He was gone.

Sunshine Ray had _literally_ just left the diner seconds before, but Sue’s scans of the frigid desolation around the Two Whales retrieved no trace of him.  Sue went back into the diner and put Sunshine Ray’s wallet into the small cardboard box behind the counter that served as a lost and found.

And there it stayed, even after Sunshine Ray was declared missing by the Arcadia Bay Police Department two days later, after his landlady called, telling them she hadn’t seen him since the morning of the twelfth.  There the wallet stayed for seven years until a busboy named Davis Williams (uncle of the late Justin Williams) stole it.

There was nothing inside anyway.

* * *

“That’s it?” Chloe asked as Luder put his elbows on the table.  “That’s what we’re supposed to be all bent out of shape over?  Some dirty hippie just disappears one day?”

Luder sighed and looked at Max.  “Is she always this impatient?”

Max smirked.  “You don’t know the half of it.”

Chloe was almost all amazement.  “Yeah.  Fine.  Shame me in front of complete strangers.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you decided to date Rex Manning.”

Max was pleased to see that Chloe was not above snorting at that.

“Anyway,” Luder said, trying to get the conversation back on track.  “That isn’t the whole story.  We need to do a little fast-forward to get the rest.”

“How big of a fast-forward?” Max asked.

* * *

_May 22, 1990_

Thirty-two-year-old Sue Wade navigated her shopping cart down the canned soup aisle of Gohrmann’s supermarket.  It was the last Saturday before DesRosiers Elementary let out for the summer, and the kids that accompanied other parents in this very supermarket knew this fact.  It infused their very being.  They were like little time-bombs, itching to scream and laugh, but keeping it inside, as though they feared that teachers were itching to spring out of the cereal aisle or from the cases of Mountain Dew to yell at them, or tell them to go stand in the corner.

Did teachers still tell kids to go stand in the corner?

The chief reason that Sue noticed the constrained hyperactivity among the younger set at Gohrmann’s this afternoon was that her own daughter, Iris Wade, did not seem to suffer from the same malady.  Iris tagged along slowly, keeping up with the languorous pace of the shopping cart.  She had her nose in a _Boxcar Children_ book, looking up occasionally to see that she didn’t bump into anything.  Cooler than the other side of a cucumber’s pillow.

“Mom?” Iris asked.

“Yeah, hon?”

“I know what I want to do on my birthday.”

“Chuck E. Cheese with Bobby Delahunt and all his little terrorist buddies?”

Iris looked at her mother like she had just bitten into a lemon.  _“No._ I want to go to the movies.”

“Really?” Sue asked.  “Which one?”

Iris smiled wide.  _“Gremlins 2.”_

Sue stopped the cart.  “Didn’t the first one give you nightmares?”

“Yeah,” Iris said.  “But I saw _Terminator,_ and _that_ didn’t give nightmares.  And that movie’s rated R.  So _Gremlins 2_ won’t, because it’s PG.  It’s _math.”_

Sue smiled.  “You know what?  I think I’ll keep you.”

“You better.”

Sue laughed.  “You want Chicken and Stars, right?”

“Yes, please,” Iris said.

Sue stopped the cart again and scanned the shelves.  She found the Chicken and Stars on the top shelf and got on her tip-toes to reach a can.

A male voice from behind her.  “Hey… Hey, Mama.”

Sue grabbed the can and turned around.  What she saw almost made her drop the soup.

He seemed smaller than the last time he’d seen him, but that must have been because she herself was smaller.  She had been fifteen-year-old Sue Putnam, not thirty-two-year-old Sue Wade.

Sunshine Ray hadn’t aged a day.  Hadn’t changed his clothes, even, since that cold day in 1973, when he’d disappeared.  When she was ignorant of the fact that she had been the last person to see someone alive.  It was only when she saw the lapel of his blazer that the surprise and curiosity of seeing Sunshine Ray in Gohrmann’s in 1990 turned to panic and terror.

A fresh blot of mustard.

_The_ fresh blot of mustard.  The exact same mustard that was on that exact same lapel in 1973.  The one eerie detail she’d remembered most from her last encounter with the missing-until-now Sunshine Ray seventeen years prior taunted her with the absurdity and impossibility of its existence.

“Do you know how to get to Portland?” Sunshine Ray asked.  “King Harvest is playing, and I need to meet my hook-up before I get to the arena.”

Sue didn’t say anything.  _Couldn’t_ say anything.  Her jaw bobbed up and down as words log-jammed in her skull.

“Okay,” Sunshine Ray said after awhile.  “The trip you are on is harsh, and I dig that.  You are a very beautiful woman, and I respect you, and I will leave you alone now.”

Before Sunshine Ray turned to leave, he spotted the blot of mustard on his lapel.

“I am a friend to living to all living things,” Sunshine Ray said to the mustard, “but you are a condiment, and so I shall marshal my forces against you.”

Sunshine Ray ambled away, around the corner of the soup aisle, and out of sight.  Sue had rather quickly come to terms with the fact that she had suffered a severe psychotic break.  She would pay for her groceries, drive Iris home, wait for George to come back from his job at Prescott Development, and calmly tell him what she had seen, after which, she would have herself committed.

The only problem with this plan was the evidence that she was not the only one who had seen him coming from her daughter’s mouth.

“Mom,” Iris said.  “That man smelled funny.”

* * *

“So time sucked him up and dropped him back off again?” Max asked.

“That’s what Sue Wade told me,” Luder said.  “And no one’s seen him since, so maybe it happened again.  From the story, Sunshine Ray wasn’t aware that any time had passed.  Because for all intents and purposes, it hadn’t.”

“How do you think this is possible?” Chloe asked.

Luder leaned in again, like a car dealer putting his back into the hard sell.  “Have either of you ever heard of the Black Knight Satellite?”

Max saw that Chloe was looking at her.  _Of course she would.  I pulled Sunshine Ray out of my ass.  Why_ wouldn’t _I know what the Black Knight Satellite is?_

“What is it?” Max asked.

“There are thousands of objects orbiting Earth,” Luder said.  “Most of them are man-made, and all of them are identified, save one.  The Black Knight Satellite.  No one knows what it is, but it appears to be something that was created, and not formed naturally.”

“Aliens?” Chloe asked.  _“Really?”_

“Fuck if I know,” Luder said.  “Could be a world government made it and shot it up there without telling anyone.  But there are two things I _do_ know.  The first is that it follows an irregular orbit around the Earth.  It comes and goes when it pleases.  And the _second_ is that records show it passed over Arcadia Bay in December of 1973 _and_ May of 1990.”

“The Sunshine Ray incidents,” Max said.

“Yeah,” Luder said.  “And there have been other times it’s done it.  The most recent ones were October of 2013, November of 2018, and, well, this past Monday.”

“So we know the weird shit that’s happened since Monday,” Chloe said, visibly uncomfortable at how close to home this was hitting, “but what about the other two times?  Nothing weird happened then.”

“That’s not strictly true,” Luder said.  “You’re right that nothing happened back in November.”

Chloe and Max looked at each other.  They knew better.

“But two bizarre instances happened in 2013.  The first is that all the fish in Arcadia Bay just _vanished,_ and the second is…”

Luder took out his phone and brought something up.  _“This,”_ he said, and showed the phone to Max and Chloe.

It was a video of the courtyard of the girls’ dorm at Blackwell.  It didn’t seem all that weird to Max.  Just some fireflies around a trashcan.  But this was a sentiment not shared by Chloe.

“That _is_ weird,” Chloe said.

“Am I missing something?” Max asked.  “It’s just bugs.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “Fireflies.  We don’t get those in Arcadia Bay.”

Max blinked a couple of times.  _“Really?”_

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “Not the ones that light up, anyway.”

“That video was posted to Youtube on October eighth, 2013,” Luder said.  “By a Blackwell student named Stella Hill.  I’ve conducted interviews, and no one’s seen fireflies in town before or since.  But I talked to an Entomology professor at Arizona State who said, due to shifts in climate, they _could_ start popping up in Oregon.”

“When?” Max asked.

This was the point Luder looked genuinely worried.  “In about two-hundred years.  Give or take.”

Max felt the hairs on her neck stand up.

“So you’re saying it works in both directions?” Chloe asked.  “Things get shot forward _and_ backward?  What is it about this Black Knight Satellite that causes this, do you think?”

“My guess?” Luder asked.  “Radiation.”

“That’s it?” Chloe asked.  “Radiation?  What _kind_ of radiation?”

“I don’t know.  Because I don’t know what the Black Knight Satellite _is_.  And even if I _did_ know, it would only tell half the story, because I don’t know what it is about Arcadia Bay specifically that makes this happen.  No other town has this problem when the Satellite passes over.  There have been isolated cases like this before.  The Moberly-Jourdain Incident in France, the Scottish Time-Slip.  Hell, there were even government time travel experiments like Project Rainbow.  But never so many cases localized to one place.  This town is… _special.”_

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “That’s a word for it.”

“Now,” Luder said.  “I’ve told you what I know.  Now how about you?”

“Hate to break it to you,” Chloe said, “but I don’t know a thing.”

Max looked at Chloe with eyes as big as she could manage.

“But hey,” Chloe said.  “Thank you for the lovely waste of time.”  She nudged Max’s shoulder.  “C’mon, let’s go home.”

Max and Chloe got up from their chairs as Luder got his _you-gotta-be-kidding-me_ face on.

“What about the hospital?  What about what I have on my phone?”

“I dunno,” Chloe said.  “It’s _your_ phone.  Is it a Nokia?  Try calling Nokia.  It seems to be acting up.”

As they walked away, Luder called out after them.  _“That’s bullshit and you know it!”_

Max trailed Chloe back to The Taxi as they both stayed silent.

* * *

A young woman in a black hoodie knocked on the door of Room 513 of the Embassy Suites, and waited.

She didn’t have to wait long.  Joseph Thompson answered the door. 

“Jesus,” Thompson said.  “It’s you.  Get in here… What the hell happened to your face?”

The girl who had, up until that morning, been calling herself Lorraine Foster pulled her hood back.  The left half of her face was a bomb-site of burns and cuts.  The first order of business after Max Caulfield smashed a pot of coffee across her face had been to escape Blackwell and tend to her wounds, and being that going to the doctor after an attempted murder was not the brightest play to make, she’d fished a tube of super-glue out of the glove box of her car and sealed the cuts on her face with that.  She’d been parked under an overpass applying the adhesive when the birds fell from the sky (which didn’t affect her nearly as gravely as most, as Father warned her the previous month that strange weather may have been in the offing).  She had then abandoned her own car and stole another to hide out before she made the trip to the hotel this evening.

“Never mind,” Thompson said.  “Are you… Are you out of your fucking _mind?_ Is _he_ out of his fucking mind?”

Lorraine felt a lurch in her stomach, which happened when she heard anyone speak ill of Father.

“I was supposed to talk to Joyce Price this morning,” Thompson said.  “I was going to seal the deal.  _Finally._ And what do you do?  You burn the fucking Two Whales down!  That draws heat on me, and I can’t have that.”

“F… Our mutual benefactor and I decided on a course which was best,” Lorraine said.  “As I recall, the Two Whales was the last business on Trident’s list.”

“Yeah,” Thomspon said.  “What about it?”

Lorraine stepped toward Thompson.  “You do realize that that means that he doesn’t need you anymore.”

Thompson’s eyes widened when he realized what was going on.

Lorraine’s left hand covered Thompson’s mouth, while her right found a screwdriver in the pocket of her hoodie.  She jammed the screwdriver into Thompson’s throat with two sharp stabs.

Thompson could neither scream nor breathe as he dropped to the floor.  Attempts at both resulted in bloody gurgles through the holes in his throat.  Lorraine stared into Thompson’s wide blue eyes as he bled his last onto the hotel room carpet.

This was the first time Lorraine had ever actually killed someone.  Not only did she not feel a thing, but that fact didn’t bother her in the slightest.

After two straight Caulfield fuck-ups, she needed to know she could do it at all.

Lorraine pulled her hood back over her head (all the better to evade security cameras) and left the hotel.

She got back into the stolen car and drove until she was a mile away from her destination, at which point she abandoned the car on the side of the road, and walked through the woods the rest of the way.

The moon shone on Pan Estates like a spotlight.  Wiping the sweat from the un-burnt and un-lacerated portions of her brow, she entered the main building, using the light on her phone to guide her through the dark.  She walked up the stairs until she found an open doorway illuminated by a roaring fire in the fireplace.

A cushy velvet chair rested in front of the fireplace.  The chair, as well as the person resting in it, cast a long shadow over the rest of the room.

_Father._

This was not her real father, and she would never use the word on the man in this chair.  But her real father left her, and the man in the chair didn’t.  So he got the title, even if only in her head, if only to herself.

“Thompson?” Father asked.

“Dead,” Lorraine said.

“Good… I heard about your misadventure with Max Caulfield this morning.”

There was no disappointment in his voice, which made the ache in Lorraine’s heart greater.  _My failure doesn’t surprise him.  He expected it.  I am worthless._ Lorraine felt herself almost giving into the urge to strike her own face, to reopen her wounds, to scourge herself for failing the man she loved so deeply.

“I… I failed,” Lorraine said, trying to keep the tears from her eyes and the thickness from her voice.

“Now, now,” Father said.  “Don’t be like that.”

Father rose from his chair and turned to face Lorraine at the rear of the room.  His soft features held little judgment, the eyes behind his glasses offered minimal disappointment.

“I told you Max Caulfield was slippery,” Sean Prescott said.


	13. Pain

**Chapter 13: Pain**

_October 8, 2013_

In the visitor’s parking lot of Mercy Hospital in Arcadia Bay, amid the pickup trucks and the rusty four-doors, one car stuck out like a red garter belt in a convent.

It was a dark gray 2013 Aston Martin Vanquish.  The Centenary Edition, to be precise, manufactured in commemoration of one-hundred years of the famed British automaker.  It was forbiddingly expensive, and projected power, wealth, and the kind of grace found in predatory cats.

None of these things applied, at the moment, to the man behind the wheel, hidden from the dull and plebian outside world by darkly tinted windows that were not strictly legal in the state of Oregon.

Sean Prescott sat in the driver’s seat, his hands beginning to stain the decadent leather of the steering wheel with sweat.  The eyes behind his glasses were bloodshot, and every time they fell on the rear-view mirror, he could see the unsightly brown stubble emerging on his face.

He was a man in the grip of a suffocating loneliness that his vast sums of money could not ameliorate in any meaningful way. 

No.

He was _more_ than lonely.  He was _beyond_ lonely.

The word Sean Prescott nestled himself into was _“abandoned.”_

To begin with, his wife Delia had never loved him.  Sean had to admit this was fair, because he never loved her, either.  She wanted money, he wanted children, and both were willing to give to the other in the cleanest business arrangement in which Sean had ever partaken.  Delia spent more time buying clothes, drinking mimosas, and popping pills than anything else.  The most words they’d spared each other in these most recent five of their twenty-two years of marriage had been in the past twenty-four hours, when Sean informed her that Nathan had been arrested on a variety of charges.  And those words had consisted mostly of delirious groans and confused mutters on the subject of precisely _how old_ Nathan had been.  Delia, in her stupor, seemed to be under the impression that he was still seven.

Then, there was Kristine, whom Sean would never, _ever_ forgive for her duplicity.  Nothing but smiles and charm and _daddy dearest_ bullshit.  All the while biding her time, forming a plan, and the moment she could escape?  She joined the _Peace Corps._ In _Brazil_ _._ Like _common hippie trash._ What precisely had he done to deserve this insolence?  This disobedience?  This… this _hate?_

But all this was prelude, mere overture, to the crowning failure of his life.  The donkey’s tail that could be pinned on him by anyone for the rest of his tour of the Planet Earth.

His only son Nathan…

Sean had never blamed himself for Nathan’s vast array of fuck-ups and deficiencies.  Some were built for life, and some were not.  Which wasn’t to say that he hadn’t tried to help young Nathan.  Indeed, Sean felt he _had_ to.  He did all the math, made all of the calculations, and they seemed to tell Sean that The Traveler was coming.  The herald of destruction that would cleanse the filth from his home.  And from the devastation of Arcadia Bay, Nathan could have led, _should_ have led his fellow youth of privilege into what Sean envisioned as _Prescott_ _Bay_ _:_ a hometown paradise free from the mundanity and common dirt that Sean (and his father before him) in turns suffered and bemoaned.

But Nathan fucked all of that up.  Because fucking up was what Nathan did as a matter of routine.

Sean felt ill at the very sight of Nathan, as though his own body had betrayed him by helping produce this pathetic weakling that the law required to bear the name _“_ _Prescott_ _.”_ This drain on resources, this weak limb in the family tree, this… this _fucking crybaby_ who needed therapists and doctors to wipe his nose for him.  Who couldn’t control his childish impulses, to the extent that Sean had to have daily talks with Wells over at Blackwell.

He tried to attach Nathan to Mark Jefferson (who had gone to Blackwell with Sean) to provide an outlet for Nathan’s… _indiscretions._ Sean didn’t think himself a monster, and was truly shocked at Jefferson’s proclivities (turning one of the bunkers that the Prescott family had built into a photography studio/sex chamber was rather _gauche,_ to say the least), but it was structure, it was creative endeavor, and _who did it hurt,_ besides people who didn’t matter anyway?

But Nathan went overboard, because Nathan _always_ went overboard, because fate or divine providence decreed that Sean Prescott had to have a son so dumb, and in such poor control of his impulses, that he could find an incorrect way to have a wet dream.  Nathan managed to kill some teeny-bopper slut named Rachel and actually had the poor fucking taste to _confess_ to such a thing!  And now the filth with which he shared a town was baying for Prescott blood, like swine running roughshod over a truffle field.

Some trailer park whore got herself killed, and it was the Prescott family that had to suffer.  Sean tried to conjure some way in which that was fair, and was unsuccessful in every attempt.

It didn’t matter anymore.  It was all gone now.  Sean was back to that word again.  _Abandoned._ Delia, Kristine, Nathan, fate, hope, all left him in one way or another.  Through disobedience or incompetence, through spite or indifference, they had  _abandoned_ him.

And now… Now there was only one thing left that would give him any solace or release at all.

He looked out the windshield at the main building of the hospital, on whose second floor rested Maxine Caulfield, still in a coma after his son failed to kill her, like he failed at everything.  Because she was a witness, because she couldn’t stay dead, everything else came out.  All the horror and ill of the past twenty-four hours could be laid at Max Caulfield’s feet.

Sean then looked at the passenger seat, which held the ivory-handled nine millimeter pistol that was left to him by his father.

The scenario played out in his head like those old movies from Hong Kong that a girlfriend in college made him watch.  Everything all slow-motion and doves.  He would walk into the Caulfield girl’s room and put a bullet in the comatose little bitch’s forehead.  And then, as nurses and doctors ran into the room with looks of horror on their faces, he would turn the gun on himself.

Sean didn’t think he was suicidal.  He considered suicide something the weak and the common did, and he certainly wasn’t that.  But after all this, Arcadia Bay did not deserve him.  Or his family.

The phone in his inside blazer pocket rang.  He took it out and answered it without looking to see who it was.

“I’m in the middle of something,” Sean said.

“Hello to you, too,” said Alan Fichtner, one of the attorneys for Prescott Development who was helping with Nathan’s case.  “I wanted to discuss something with you, and I don’t think I can do it over the phone.”

“To what does it pertain?” Sean asked, dropping the folksy demeanor he used in public to use the correct grammar.

“Think there might be something to an insanity plea,” Alan said.  “I’ve talked it over with a couple of the other attorneys, and we think there’s something that’s workable.  How soon can you get to Pan Estates?”

Sean looked at the hospital again, the only thing out of the ordinary being a teenager with ugly blue hair making her way in.  He could already feel the fit of pique that brought him here receding like the tide.  Caulfield’s blood wasn’t worth his own.  Which wasn’t to say that Caulfield’s blood was _worthless,_ but he’d put a pin in it.  _For a later date…_

“I’m on my way,” Sean said, and hung up.  He put his keys in the ignition and turned the engine over.

Sean Prescott never again went to Mercy Hospital with the aim of killing Max Caulfield.

And Alan Fichtner never made it to Pan Estates.

* * *

_August 28, 2019_

The girl who had called herself Lorraine Foster saw Sean squint at her as she stood in the shadow he cast.  That look rapidly melted to one of alarm, and he rushed toward her.

“Oh my _God,”_ Sean said.  He stopped just a few feet away, narrowing his eyes in the fire-lit room at Lorraine’s ravaged face.  “What did she _do_ to you?”

For a moment, Lorraine allowed herself to feel warm in the presence of Father’s concern.  “Max Caulfield broke a pot of fresh coffee across my face.”

Sean seemed distraught.  “You didn’t go to the doctor, did you?”

“No,” Lorraine said.  “I closed the wounds with super-glue.”

“That’s wise,” Sean said.  “Super-glue, believe it or not, is much more safe than stitches.  It’s non-porous, so there’s less of a chance of infection.  I knew I backed a smart girl.”

Lorraine smiled.

“How did you try to do it?” Sean asked.

“I paid two kids at Blackwell a hundred bucks each to start a fight outside the teacher’s lounge.  That got the science teacher out, leaving Caulfield alone.  I went in with a bit of extension cord and tried to strangle her.”

“Hmm,” Sean said.  “Risky gambit.  Strangulation takes a long time, even after you render them unconscious.”

“Unconscious would have worked for me,” Lorraine said.  “Plenty of fun you can have when they’re out cold.  Cut their throat, cave in their head.  Nice and quiet.  And I could have gotten out in the time it took Mister Graham to break up the fight.”

“That the science teacher’s name?” Sean asked.

“Yeah,” Lorraine said. 

“You still have a gun with bullets,” Sean said.  “Why not shoot her?

In spite of herself, Lorraine couldn’t keep the disbelief off of her mangled face.  “In _public?_ In _broad daylight?_ With _fifty witnesses outside the room?_ The object was to get out as clean as possible.  And I tried _‘just shooting her,’_ remember?  It didn’t work.”

“Simmer down, now,” Sean said, smiling.  “I’m just checking to see if you’re smart all the way through.  It seems you are.”

Lorraine smiled, and saw Sean’s own smile fade from his face.

The masquerade was slipping.

Lorraine knew that she wasn’t Sean’s daughter.  They both knew that.  They lived on the fringe and conspired to murder.  Only a sick person would call this connection familial… but Lorraine supposed she was sick, then.  She loved Sean.  He was there for her when no one else was.  They both may have been able to fool themselves into feeling some kind of bond with each other beyond a mutual goal, but Lorraine thought she alone of the two of them would have been perfectly happy with the fiction.

As long as she lived, she would never tell him that she thought of him as a father.  Her illusions hurt only herself.

“How did you get here?” Sean asked.

“Ditched my car,” Lorraine said.  “I’m made, now.  Stole another, ditched that, walked here.”

“Good girl,” Sean said.  He put his hands in his pockets, looked at her, and smiled.

His hand came out of the pocket of his khakis with a set of car keys.  Lorraine looked from the keys to Sean, unsure.

“Take the Escalade,” Sean said.

Lorraine’s eye lit up.  “Really?”

“Yeah,” Sean said.  “You got rid of Thompson, so I know you have it in you.  You haven’t gotten rid of Caulfield or Price yet, but as I can clearly see,” he said as he indicated her face, “you’ve made great sacrifices in pursuit of that goal.  No one’s looking for the Escalade  It’s fine.”

Lorraine gingerly raised her hand and took the keys from Sean.  He took this moment to wrap her up in a hug.

“I have faith in you,” Sean said.  “And I’m proud of you.”

Lorraine closed her eyes.

* * *

Chloe and Max made a stop at the Walgreen’s on Third and Taft to pick up bandages after they had finished talking to Luder.  The ride back home was the kind of silent that waiting rooms full of expectant fathers in the old days had been.  If the four days of countdown held, then the storm was set to make landfall this Saturday.  It was Wednesday night.  And both Chloe and Max were on one side of a great partition, wondering what the other side held in store.

When they got home, they went into the bathroom.  Max took her hoodie and held out her arm so Chloe could unravel the brown cloth bandage covering her bicep.  Underneath was a collection stitches emerging from shallow wounds arranged in a pattern like strokes in kanji.  Chloe winced.  It looked painful.

“This isn’t so bad,” Max said, deflating with relief.

“It looks plenty bad to me,” Chloe said.

“You didn’t hear the doctors tell me how serious it was.  One of the shards from the coffee pot came close to nicking an artery.  I thought I was going to have a bunch of permanent scars, but… this is actually kind of cute.”

Chloe’s face was all amazement.  _“Cute?”_

“Yeah,” Max said.  “They’re small and localized and tell a story.  It sounds weird, but I almost hope they _are_ permanent.  I’m too scared to get a tattoo, so this kinda does nicely.”

“You’re weird.”

Max looked down her nose at Chloe.  “Chloe, I have a bullet wound on my chest that looks like a cigarette burn, and an exit wound on my back that looks like a starfish.  If I had to pick and choose,” she said as she indicated her arm, “I choose this one.”

“Fair enough,” Chloe said.

The two were hungry, so they settled on ordering a pizza before they went to bed.  They tried three numbers (all of which had presumably been closed on account of dead bird) before Pizza Hut took their call.

“Of course they’re still open,” Chloe said.  “Big corporations are like cockroaches.  Not even the apocalypse can stop them.”

Twenty-nine minutes later, their medium pepperoni and olive deep-dish came, and they split it before they brushed their teeth and went to bed.

Max fell asleep.

Chloe didn’t.

She knew what was waiting on the other side of sleep.  The storm.  The vast and incomprehensible killing machine that had either Arcadia Bay or Chloe herself on its to-do list.  Maybe both, if it was feeling pissy.  And while Tobanga said that a storm is a storm and doesn’t have a mind of its own, Chloe could have easily been fooled into thinking this particular storm had emotions.  Six years ago, in another timeline, the storm heralded itself in mysterious and magical ways.  Now, it was destructive and violent.  Almost as though it had gained a sense of swagger, foreshadowing the damage it could do if it wanted, and was stretching its legs after two prior thwarted attempts to bloom.  And Chloe believed it _did_ want to do damage.

So desperate was Chloe to get her mind off of this, that she got out of bed and went to the closet, being mindful of the noise she was making, moving only by the light of the moon outside the bedroom window. 

She found the Xerox box.  The one she had avoided taking with her on Sunday when she had visited Joyce, and the one that Joyce had given to her yesterday at the Two Whales.  Chloe slung the box under her arm, quietly padded to the bedroom door, and let herself out.

Clad in red basketball shorts and her black _Lucha Underground_ t-shirt, Chloe sat down on the couch and turned on the lamp on the end table.  She stared at the Xerox box for a moment, before leaning down and removing the lid.

It was Rachel’s old stuff.

It was strange to Chloe how everything inside the box seemed smaller and dimmer since the day she had put these things in this box years before.  She started removing things.  A concert ticket from when they had gone to see Screaming Females in Salem.  Her old red flannel shirt, which Chloe stopped to smell to see if any of Rachel still remained within its fabric.  No such traces remained. 

A small album of Rachel’s headshots, which she handed out like candy to everyone but Chloe.  Like it was privilege enough that she had decided to grace Chloe with her presence, and the need for photographic evidence was an indulgence to the wealthy.  Chloe would have begged to differ.  She had to go up to people behind Rachel’s back and ask for their spares.

And Chloe saw, near the bottom of the box between an old scarf that Rachel left in The Beast and had never gotten back, and a pair of earrings that Rachel had given Chloe that had never been worn, that there was a photograph that had been folded in half and placed on its side.

Chloe reached in and pulled out it, bringing the folded halves apart. 

On the right was Rachel, she of the enigmatic stare and the blue feather earring.  On the left was Chloe, she of the blue dye-job and black beanie, giving the camera the finger.

This was the photo Chloe had used to make Rachel’s missing person’s posters back in the day.  She remembered how much it hurt to fold this photo in half to scan it, as though it were an obscenely valuable baseball card that would have had all its value instantly dis—

The photograph vibrated.  The image shimmered.  Chloe stifled a yelp as she dropped it to the floor.

She had been so lost in nostalgia, reverie, and the ever-pressing situation in which she had found herself, that she had completely forgotten that time travel was possible through photographs. 

Chloe stared at the photo on the ground as though it were a coiled viper.  This was the one aspect of Max’s time travel story that had always given Chloe difficulty.  Namely: How did one travel through a photograph?  In a tactile sense, mostly.  Did one _jump_ through it?  Or, like, shrink down somehow?

Her curiosity getting the better of her, she picked the photo back up again and stared at it. 

Nothing happened.

Still staring, Chloe figured it must have been a Zen thing, or something.  Freeing of the mind, or what-have-you.  Something someone as preternaturally…

An ache began to bloom in Chloe’s head, and the world flashed white.

* * *

_January 2, 2013_

Chloe was staring down the lens of a camera that she was holding in her hand.  The middle finger of her other hand was up.

“Be careful with that.  I need it for a class this semester.”

Chloe lowered the camera, and looked around.  She was in her room.  Her _old_ room at Joyce’s house.  The familiarity of the posters, the graffiti, the empty beer bottles, the overflowing ashtray, the pungent smell of weed was jarring.  It was the warmest and most familiar slap in the face she could ever have conceived.

The nails of the hand that was holding the camera were painted blue.  She put the camera down, looked at her body, and saw clothes she hadn’t worn in years.  Looking up again, she saw that the room was surrounded by a ribbon of white energy, and Chloe knew instinctively that that ribbon was her confinement.  _Do not pass the white ribbon, do not collect two-hundred dollars._

The sound of a bottle opening.  Chloe looked to her left.

Rachel Dawn Amber was using the bottle opener she kept on her keychain to open a bottle of Newcastle that she had smuggled into the house, evading the watchful eyes of Joyce and Step-Douche.  She took a swig.

“I went to Blackwell today,” Rachel said.  “Y’know, just to see if any of the kids staying for winter break wanted some headshots, see who was holding, catching up on whatever gossip there was to catch up on, all that.  And… and fucking _Samuel_ was there, and he wanted a photo.  I’m pretty sure he lives on campus, and I’m sure there needs to be some kind of adult presence there, but… it’s like he was _waiting_ for me.  Like he _knew_ I’d be there at _that_ moment, when _I_ didn’t know I’d be there until a half an hour before.  Like, on a fucking _whim._ I don’t know what his deal is, but… do you think it’s possible to be given the _good_ kind of creeps?  Like _‘This person or place or whatever is strange, but it’s cool that they’re strange, because that means the world is a more mysterious and wonderful place than you thought it was?’”_

Rachel looked at Chloe, immediately blasting away any thought that she had in her head, like a bully’s foot through a nerd’s sand castle.

What Chloe fixed on wasn’t that she had traveled through time.  It wasn’t that she was sharing a room with Rachel for the first time in over six years.  It wasn’t even that Rachel was every last bit as beautiful as she remembered.

It was a zit on Rachel’s chin.

She’d hidden it with foundation, and it didn’t show up in the photo that she had jumped through, but it was there nonetheless.  Like a kitten hiding under a blanket.

That she traveled through time meant it was impossible.  The ribbon of energy meant it was odd.  But the zit on Rachel’s chin?

The zit on Rachel’s chin meant it was _real._

“Hello?” Rachel asked.  “Earth to Chloe?”

Chloe was powerless to do anything except stare at her and grow goosebumps at hearing her voice.  She didn’t even have any recordings of Rachel.  She hadn’t heard that light, breathy voice in six years.

And oh, that _face!_ That beautiful and glorious face!  Cryptic and open in equal measure, as though she could tell you that the sun was shining, and you’d feel as though you weren’t getting the whole story.

Chloe knew that Rachel liked guys, and Chloe was okay with that, even playing wingman on occasion, in Rachel’s attempts to get to know those among the male set that she had deemed _“cute.”_ But even if Rachel _were_ into women, Chloe would never have dared let her know how she felt about her.  She wouldn’t even have given any hints.  Rachel was an absolute.  A litmus test.  If Rachel turned her down, then all of the fears Chloe had about being a crummy person would have been realized.  How _couldn't_ it be true?  Rachel said it, after all.

And so, she stood as a sentinel.  She helped Rachel get whatever happiness in life that she could.  To whatever extent that Chloe romanticized her own existence, she thought this love unrequited, this heroism untold, this good deed un-remarked upon would have made a great story in and of itself.

“The weed’s laced with something, isn’t it?” Rachel asked.  “That’s why you’re a zombie right now.  Is it formaldehyde?  Tell me it’s not formaldehyde.”

And it would be so simple, wouldn’t it?  To grab Rachel by the shoulders, right now, and say _“If you see someone named Mark Jefferson, run as fast as you can in the opposite direction!  Cut Nathan Prescott out of your life!  And wait a few months, because my friend Max is coming from Seattle, and you’ll love the shit out of her!”_

_My friend._

_My_ girl _friend._

And with that, whatever piss and vinegar she’d begun to get back from her eighteen-year-old self had gone away.  She felt older than that.  She felt older than her natural twenty-five.  She felt ancient, antiquated, crone-like.  She was an Adult.  She had Responsibilities.

Chloe knew the fuck-ups that come part and parcel with altering a timeline.  She’d lived on both ends of it: one as an embittered punk, and one as a quadriplegic with a terminal illness.  If she saved Rachel, if she gave her the tools to save herself, then who knew what else would be left in its place?  Yes, there was a chance that nothing bad would happen, but the world had a habit of being cruel, and that chance was so thin that she could see what was behind it.

It could have— _would_ have—undone all of the good things that had happened to her between now and 2019, and looking at Rachel’s beautiful, gorgeous, lost face forced Chloe to grow up a little and admit that a lot of wonderful things _had_ happened.  More than she ever could have thought possible.  That her happiness and her success had been brief in the long-run (and would most likely end in death on Saturday) didn’t mean that they didn’t happen.

But those were tiny compared to the big reason.  The one that threw one end of the scale to the ground instead of merely tipping it.

In addition to potentially undoing all the good that had come to her, saving Rachel could potentially undo all the bad that she had _stopped._

This wasn’t as easy to understand as _“I pick Max over Rachel.”_ Nothing would ever be that simple again.  The fact of the matter was that Nathan Prescott, and The Bull, and Denise Leonard, and Mark Jefferson were all either imprisoned or dead thanks to Chloe and Max.  And if she did something that let them back out to prey upon the weak yet again, then… well…

Then Chloe wouldn’t deserve _either_ of them.

“For the first time in my life,” Rachel said, “I am going to say that I am not pretty enough to be stared at like that.  Jesus, are you…”

Chloe cut Rachel off with as tight a hug as she could manage.  She closed her eyes and breathed in Rachel’s scent of weed and lavender oil.

Rachel’s arms embraced her back.

“Hey,” Rachel said.  “It’s okay.  Whatever’s wrong, it’ll be fine.”

Chloe opened her eyes.

_No._

_It won’t._

The world turned white.

* * *

_August 28, 2019_

Chloe was back on the sofa in her and Max’s home adjacent to the Bradford Dormitory.  The photo was still in her hand.

“We were many, once,” a voice next to her said.

Chloe turned to her left.

Tobanga was sitting on the couch next to her.

“We outnumbered the stars in the sky,” Tobanga said.  “We walked the land free of fear and shame before anyone knew time as a concept.  We smiled and laughed and danced, and then… then we all fell away.  One by one… And all that was left was me.”

A pause.

“Did, um… did _we_ do it?” Chloe asked.

Tobanga looked at Chloe.  “Do _what?”_

“Human beings, I mean.  Did we, like… hunt you to extinction, or something?”

Tobanga looked at Chloe, then down at the Native American body that she was wearing, and then back to Chloe.

_“Jesus,_ Chloe, don’t labor the fucking metaphor.  The only thing human beings like more than doing awful shit is making themselves feel _guilty_ about doing awful shit.  We were just… we were here, and then we _weren’t.”_

“Where did you go?” Chloe asked.

“I don’t know,” Tobanga said.  “Maybe I should hire a detective.”

Tobanga looked at Chloe with her eyebrows raised.  Chloe’s own lowered in response.

“They’re going to have to invent new ways for you to go fuck yourself.”

Tobanga laughed a laugh that Chloe was sure only she could hear.  “That’s the spirit,” Tobanga said.  “Just remember that you aren’t the only one who gets to take mopey trips down memory lane.  Though I have to say that I admire your restraint.  To date, you’re the only person with time travel powers who told themselves that fucking with the past is a terrible idea.  High marks.”

A pause.

“Samuel,” Chloe said.

Tobanga looked at her.  “The janitor here at Blackwell?”

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “Rachel wondered what his deal was.  Truth be told, I’m kind of curious about it myself.”

Tobanga stared off into the middle distance.  “You know what, Chloe?  I don’t know… and I find it _very_ worrisome that I don’t know.”

Chloe put Rachel’s stuff back in the box, and replaced the lid. She got up, picked up the box, and began to walk back to the bedroom.

“Chloe?”

Chloe looked back at Tobanga.

“If there’s an object lesson from tonight, don’t you think it might be that you should hold the ones you love as tight as you can, for as _long_ as you can?”

Chloe didn’t think there was an object lesson to _anything_ anymore.  She looked down at the box full of Rachel’s things, and remembered why she had brought it out in the first place.

If Tobanga was right, she’d be seeing Rachel again soon enough.


	14. He Ain't Even Old-Timey!

**Chapter 14: He Ain’t Even Old-Timey!**

_August 29, 2019_

Chloe sat at the edge of the bed after the clock passed midnight, with her back to the sleeping Max, sparing the occasional over-the-shoulder glance to her adorable slumbering girlfriend.

Sleep was the enemy right now. 

The storm was waiting for her on the other side of shut-eye.

Every time Chloe dreamed of the storm, she felt like her brain had been coated in itching powder from a joke shop.  She figured that she was having these dreams for a reason, and that they were trying to tell her something, but trying to conjure their meaning made Chloe feel like she was an ant trying to study advanced calculus. 

And… she was not above admitting that she was afraid.

Chloe wasn’t convinced that the storm was getting bigger every time she saw it in her dreams, but it certainly did _feel_ that way.  She’d lived in Seattle and vacationed in Los Angeles once, and the small town punk had gotten slight vertigo staring at the skyscrapers for the first time.  She’d known, theoretically, that buildings had a habit of getting so big, but to see it with her own eyes like that? 

In every dream, it was like she was suspended in the air, shielded from harm, only to take in the unfathomable enormity of the storm, which had dwarfed every man-made structure she had ever born witness to.  Chloe did not consider it outside the realm of possibility that the storm itself was giving her these dreams with the sole purpose of intimidating her.  As if a weather pattern could use the same tactics as an ex-con stubbing out a cigarette on his tongue in a display of don’t-fuck-with-me bravado.

Chloe stared at the carpet, emptying her mind of all thought as the sun began to rise and shine on her back through the window behind her.

She looked at the clock on the nightstand.

6:17 AM.

As the light grew brighter in the room, Chloe’s own thoughts got dimmer, fuzzier, more sluggish as her body rebelled against her in the need for sleep.  Chloe even went through a childish minute where she held her upper eyelids open with her fingers clutching her eyelashes.

But she had to let go.  Her upper eyelids slapped down over her lower eyelids with the effect of a knockout punch.  Her head lowered…

* * *

_The sound._

_The wet and the gray had been here before, but the_ sound.

_It was an auditory black hole from which no other sound—and no rational thought—could escape.  The rushing of the wind and the falling of the rain created a sound not unlike one would imagine a vacuum cleaner owned by Atlas.  Rushing and cacophony to cause springing blood from the ears._

_At the base of this storm, this vast column of malevolence, was the only color in sea or sky.  A great brown cloud as the storm tore up the earth beneath it…_

* * *

…and jerked back up again.

Chloe looked at the clock on the nightstand.

6:18 AM.

Max would be up soon.  Her sleep cycle would no doubt be geared toward an early morning rise, even if she didn’t have to go in to school today.

Chloe got off the bed and walked into the hall, closing the door behind her.

As softly as she could, as _lightly_ as she could, she did some jumping-jacks to get herself used to staying awake.  After which, one word drowned out every other in Chloe’s vocabulary.

_Omelet._

It was the one thing Chloe knew how to make, besides dirty jokes and inappropriate comments. She’d learned after she’d seen a Youtube tutorial, and the damnedest thing was, Max _liked_ them.  Chloe made them for her on special occasions.

Someone tried to strangle her to death yesterday.  That was a special occasion, right?

Chloe padded into the kitchen, only to realize she’d yet to familiarize herself with it all that well.  It seemed like they’d been evading death and biblical plagues for an eon, but Chloe had only moved in on Sunday.  Today was Thursday.

_Christ…_

She found a new no-stick pan and one of those plastic flipper things (Max had corrected her, saying it was _not_ a spatula).  She got a bowl out of one of the upper cupboards and found a whisk in one of the drawers.  A short voyage to the fridge found that Max had indeed bought eggs.  A couple of more things out of the crisper, and Chloe set to work.

Chloe was surprised how into making this omelet she was.  For the first time since coming to Arcadia Bay, this was a task that had an actual, tangible outcome.  An effort with something to show for it.  The only thing on her docket even close to that was…

_No, no, don’t think about that.  Use water, not milk, Max doesn’t like it when it’s too fluffy, she says it’s like eating a yoga mat._

Ten minutes later, Chloe was the proud creator of a diced ham and green olive omelet, all rolled-up like a burrito instead of the half-moon shape one gets at a restaurant.  Salt and pepper were applied judiciously.

She found a fork, put it on the plate, and walked back into the bedroom.  She sat down on the side of the bed and waved the plate under the sleeping Max’s nose.

It worked like a charm.

Max’s eyes fluttered open, and she smiled at what awaited her, and who was providing it.

“Awwww,” Max said, her voice creaky with sleep.  “This is, like, baby rabbit adorable.”

Chloe gave Max the plate as she sat up.  “Congratulations on making it another day not dying while dating me.  The longer we’re together, the bigger an achievement that is.”

Max gave Chloe an _“Oh c’mon!”_ look.  “I’d be disappointed that you’re down on yourself, but… that just means I get another one of these tomorrow.”

Chloe smiled.  “Let’s talk.”

Max spoke through a mouthful of food.  “About what?”

“About anything,” Chloe said.  “Anything you want.”

Max swallowed her mouthful of omelet and furrowed her brow.  “You mean we can’t talk about anything any other time?  It _has_ to be today?”

“Oh, we can talk about anything _any_ time,” Chloe said.  “Today just has an exclamation point on it.”

Max nodded.  “I dunno,” Max said.  “I may get mushy.”

Chloe felt her insides cringe.  Hearing Max talk about how wonderful she thought Chloe was made her feel… the opposite of okay.  Like she was talking about a version of Chloe that operated without her knowing.

“I said _‘anything,’”_ Chloe said.  “So…”

Max mulled it over for a moment as she chewed another mouthful.  She swallowed, and seemed to have come up with something.

“When… did you know… that we were going to last?”

Chloe didn’t even have to think about it.  What she _did_ have to think about was whether she wanted to tell this particular story.  _Quick! Stall!_

“When you said you were getting mushy,” Chloe said, “you weren’t fucking around, were you?”

“I _am_ the fluffier of the two,” Max said.

“Okay,” Chloe said.  “Um… We were in bed.”

“Oh,” Max said.  “Was it after we… _y’know…”_

Chloe sat straight up.  “Had sex for the first time?  Max, we’re in our twenties and we’ve done ungodly things to each other.  We don’t need euphemisms for having sex.”

“But _was_ it though?”

“No,” Chloe said.  “At least not the first time.  This was, like, _after_ the first time.  We were in my bed.  It was over the winter break in your year at Blackwell.  Joyce and Step-Douche were out of town, I think because he wanted to go to a gun show in Portland.

“I still can’t believe she wanted to go to those,” Max said.

“She didn’t,” Chloe said.  “But, um… We were in bed.  Naked.  We had the house to ourselves.  And I remember it was snowing outside, and the house didn’t have great ventilation, so we were all huddled close to each other, trying to stay warm.  But you got hungry.  So you got up, and you got your shirt and a pair of your ugly-ass underwear on.”

“I like my underwear.”

“I don’t,” Chloe said.  “I refuse to apologize about this.”

Max stuck out her tongue.  Chloe smiled.

“Anyway, you got those on, and you started to leave the room.  And… as you reached the doorframe… you cut the _loudest_ fart I have ever heard in my life.”

It was like someone pulled a stopper on Max, and she started to deflate.  She slouched, and her mouth fell.

“Chloe, I was being serious.”

“So am I,” Chloe said.  “It… It wasn’t the _fact_ that you farted.  It was the fact that you farted and didn’t _say_ anything.  To be completely honest, I don’t think you were aware that you did it.”

Max put her plate down on the bed and crossed her arms.  “And _that_ told you we were going to last?”

“It did,” Chloe said.  “It’s… Look, when people talk about love, they talk about it like it’s this one big _thing,_ y’know?  Like that monolith in _2001._ It’s whole, one piece, and you can’t argue with it.  But that’s not true.  Love is a bunch of _little_ things that come together.  Like… You know how Gummi Bears can melt into this thick multicolored candy slab if you leave them in a car on a hot day?”

“And one of these things is me passing gas and not excusing myself?”

Chloe sighed.  _“Acceptance._ That’s kinda where I’m going with this.  Up to that point in my life, I’d felt wanted.  I’d felt _tolerated._ I had a mom and dad in my life that made me feel _loved_ on some level, so it wasn’t like that… but I’d never felt _accepted._ I never knew that anyone had ever been… y’know… _comfortable_ around me.  And a lot of that was my attitude, a lot of that was by design.  But… _that_ was the point where I knew I had someone who was going to accept me, warts and all.  Because they revealed one of their warts to me without their knowing it.  Without even _caring_ if I knew it or not.  I mean, if love _isn’t_ being comfortable enough around someone to drop some serious ass, then I don’t know what _is.”_

Chloe chanced a look at Max.  She wasn’t upset anymore.

“That’s… actually really sweet.”

“Good,” Chloe said as some of the internal pressure eased.  “I’m glad you think so.”

Max picked up her plate again, and got another forkful.  Something must have occurred to her, because she sat the fork down.

“One thing, though.”

“What is it?” Chloe asked.

Max sighed, looking like she was debating whether or not to pull the trigger on what she was going to say.

“You say that’s the moment you knew we were going to last, but… you left me a few months later.”

All of the tiny hairs on Chloe’s back woke up instantly.

“We’re going there, aren’t we?”

There was no malice in Max’s voice when she said “You said _‘anything.’”_

Chloe sighed and rubbed her face.  “When I walked out on you… I knew I was walking out on my last shot at being happy.  Because I knew if I did it, then I wouldn’t deserve it.  But I was an idiot with a point to prove, and those are hard to stop.  I will _never_ stop kicking my ass for doing it.  And I’ll never stop being grateful that we found each other again.”

Her words came from the heart, so much so that they bypassed all of her filters to the mouth.  Chloe had no idea what she had sounded like when she said it.  But apparently she had put some stank on her words, because Max’s eyebrows rose in an expression of honest sympathy.  Chloe was honestly curious as to what Max had to say to this.

Chloe would never find out, because someone started knocking at the front door.

Both Chloe and Max looked at the bedroom doorway with irritation.

“I’ll get it,” Chloe said.

Chloe tried her best not to stomp as she made her way to the living room, and did her level best to keep the scowl off of her face as she opened the door.

_Warren_ _._

“Uh, good morning, Chloe,” Warren said.

“Morning,” Chloe said, deliberately monotoning herself so she wouldn’t sound angry.  “Why are you at school when there’s no school?”

“We were going to be dissecting frogs this week,” Warren said.  “I had to move them from the cooler in my classroom to the freezer in the basement of the main building.  I didn’t want to come back whenever all this gets resolved and have my classroom smelling like rotting amphibian.”  I figured while I was here…”

Warren leaned down and picked up Max’s satchel from the porch.

“This got left in her room.  She never got it, what with the, uh… attempted murder and all.”

Chloe took the satchel from Warren and nodded.  The two of them just stared at each other for a little bit.

“I don’t have to worry about you taking care of her, do I?” Warren asked.

Chloe looked Warren up and down.  “You’re fuckin’ A _right,_ you don’t.”

Warren smiled.  “I knew I liked you for a reason.  You have a good one.”

Chloe couldn’t suppress a small grin.  “You, too,” she said, and went back in the house…

… and tripped over the shoes she had left by the door the night before.  Chloe dropped Max’s satchel, spilling most of the contents onto the carpet.

_“Shit!”_

Max called from the bedroom.  “What is it?”

“Tripped,” Chloe said.  “Spilled shit.  I’m fine.”

Chloe knelt down and began to put Max’s stuff back in her satchel.  She picked up a notebook, and…

_What the hell?_

* * *

By the time Chloe made it into the bedroom, Max had finished the omelet.  Chloe put the satchel on the bed next to her while still clutching the notebook.

“Warren brought that by for you,” Chloe said.

“Well, I’ll be sure to thank…”

Max saw the notebook, and caught herself.  Chloe held it in front of her as she leaned against the wall.

“Max,” Chloe said.  “I used to live with a security guard.  And now, you live with a detective.  You’re gonna find out what I did. There are some people you can’t live with while expecting to hide things.”

Chloe flipped through the notebook.

“Look,” Chloe said.  “A list of names.  All women.  With social media accounts corresponding _with_ those names.  You got your Facebooks, your Twitter handles, your Instagrams, even a Tumblr or two.  One of these names… is Lorraine Foster.  Which has no accounts next to her name, because there _is_ no Lorraine Foster.  But this tells me that the rest of these names are girls in your classes.”

Chloe sat down on the bed next to Max.  “Now if I were a betting woman, I’d bet that you wrote all of this down because you were set to do some spying.  And there’s only one reason I can come up with.”

Chloe set the notebook down.

“It’s the reason you came back to Arcadia Bay, isn’t it?  You were going to try to find The Traveler.”

Max looked at Chloe for a long time before she nodded.

“Why?” Chloe asked.

“To _help_ them,” Max said.  “I have money, God knows I can afford it.  If, like, whales started beaching themselves, or red rain started falling, I had a shot at finding her.  Give her a little cash and get her out of town.  So she didn’t have to go what I went through.  What Jennifer Healy went through.  So the town stayed safe.  But…”

“But you didn’t know it was gonna be me.”

Max nodded again.  Chloe sighed.

“Max, why didn’t you _tell_ me this is why you came back?”

“Chloe,” Max said.  “What would your reaction have been?”

“I’d have been furious,” Chloe said.  “To _start,_ but then I would have backed your play.  You don’t know me well enough to know that by now?”

“I _do,_ Chloe.  But… you go on a lot about how much you hate this town… I couldn’t risk it.”

Chloe sighed angrily.  “Tell me.  Point blank.  Without thinking.  Why does this matter to you so much?  The _real_ reason.”

“Chloe,” Max said.  “This is _home.”_

Max had put enough feeling behind her words that Chloe believed her.  Any anger that she had had vanished before she could do anything with it.

“I could live somewhere else for the rest of my life,” Max said, “and it would still be home.  I can’t leave this place to get flattened by a storm.  And you’re still here, so _you_ can’t either.”

Chloe looked into Max’s sincere, wet eyes, and felt the opposite of how she usually did.  She felt lost and adrift, even though destiny and fate had led her here, to this moment, by the hand.  Every thought she had was more despondent than the last.

_This is the end, isn’t it?_

_How long did you really think the universe was going to let us keep each other?_

_I love you, and you love me, and somehow that doesn’t count._

_The blood I have to spill, the life I have to give, they aren’t my own.  This is not my story._

But Max, in the way only Max had, seemed to know the general tenor of her thoughts, the boiling point of her emotions.  She took Chloe’s hand.

“It’s never good enough for you, is it?” Max asked.

Chloe tilted her head.

“You will repeatedly drag yourself, because you don’t think you’re good enough.  And that makes you try harder.  So you’ll be the person that everyone sees when they look at you.  So you can be the person you think I deserve.”

Max sat up and looked Chloe dead in the eye.

“And _then?_ Then you become _unstoppable._ Someone just has to tell you that you can’t do something before you make sure it gets _done._ You’ll accomplish something _great,_ and then… then you’ll kick your own ass because it wasn’t great _enough,_ and the whole thing starts all over again.”

Chloe’s voice was thick.  “That makes me sound like an idiot.”

Max smiled for a bit.  “This whole thing started in my photography class.   The Everyday Heroes contest.  But you know what?  That’s _bullshit._ Heroes don’t come along everyday… Not the ones like you.”

Chloe could have kissed her just then.  She didn’t.  It seemed too puny a response.

“Thank you,” Chloe said.

“You’re welcome,” Max said.  “I know you’ll fix this.  Because if you don’t… I will _never_ fart in front of you again.”

Chloe laughed.  Loud.  _What have I done, telling her that?_

Max started taking things out of her satchel with a smile on her face.  “I have some gum in here.  You want some?”

“No, I’m good,” Chloe said.  She surveyed the array of articles removed from the satchel.  One in particular piqued her interest.

She picked up a piece of thick paper about the size of a postcard, with a picture of The Founding Fathers of Arcadia Bay on one side.

“Hey,” Chloe said.  “This is for that Arcadia Bay museum that’s opening up, right?”

“Yeah,” Max said, still rooting through her satchel. “I think the Chamber of Commerce is handing them out.  There were a ton of them in the Teacher’s Lounge.”

 “There were a bunch of these at the Two Whales,” Chloe said.  “Do you think it… might…”

Something caught Chloe’s eye.

_No…_

_No, it_ can’t _be…_

The look on Chloe’s face must have been one for the ages, because Max picked up on it immediately.

“Chloe?  What is it?”

Chloe looked up from the photo.  “Call Victoria,” Chloe said.  _“Now.”_

* * *

Chloe and Max got dressed after Max made the call.  Chloe took her contacts out (her eyes had been itchy all morning) and put her glasses on.  Max managed to get marginally spiffy, putting on her dreamcatcher necklace over a white button-down.

Victoria must have called Warren, because he showed up before she did.

“What’s this about?” Warren asked the both of them in the living room.

“Victoria needs to be here for this,” Chloe said.  “You’ll know soon enough, anyway.”

Fifteen minutes later, Victoria arrived through the unlocked front door.  She scanned the three of them, before her eyes landed on Max.

“Before we go any further,” Victoria said in lieu of a hello, “what the hell is _that?”_

“What?” Max asked.

Victoria pointed at Max’s center mass.  _“That.”_

Max looked down.  “My dreamcatcher necklace?  What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” Victoria said.  “I just didn’t know you were a toddler from New Mexico in 1981.”

Max sighed, and took the necklace off.

“Okay,” Victoria said, smiling at how successful her childish pissiness was.  “Why am I here?”

Chloe opened her mouth, and closed it again.  There really was no right way to say this.

She wordlessly moved next to Victoria, took out the ticket to the museum that bore the pictures of the town’s founding fathers, and pointed to the man in the second row on the far left.  Max and Warren crowded around the two of them to see.

Chloe, Max, and Warren had been born in Arcadia Bay, and as natives, had seen this picture countless times.  But only now, given the context of their personal lives, did they see what Chloe saw.

There was no mistaking those cold, beady eyes.

Staring back at them, from a photograph taken in 1912, was Nathan Prescott.


	15. 1995-1953

**Chapter 15: 1995-1953**

The sepia tone of the photograph made Nathan’s blue eyes look dead, cadaver-like.  He had a beard in the photo, as light as his hair.  He was older in this photograph by a few years than when Max had seen him this past November.  To someone who didn’t know him as intimately as Max did, they could have been fooled into thinking that this was a distant family relation staring back at them from the year 1912.  A long-forgotten Prescott who bore a striking resemblance to the fallen scion of what was once the most powerful family in Arcadia Bay.

But Max wasn’t fooled.  She would not entertain even the most far-reaching and all-encompassing of rational explanations that her mind offered.  Arcadia Bay wasn’t a _“rational explanation”_ kind of place.

That was Nathan.

_You never forget the guy who shot you,_ Max thought.

The four of them stood there, staring at the postcard-sized ticket that bore the photograph of The Founding Fathers of Arcadia Bay, for time indeterminate.  To Max, it felt as brief as a blink, but as long as a year.  Someone she had known in the twenty-first century had somehow gotten shunted back to the beginning of the twentieth.  Her problems with relative time seemed miniscule to the fact that Nathan had directly violated it.

Thankfully, mercifully, _finally,_ Victoria broke the silence.

“What the fuck is this?”

Victoria glared at Chloe like she was more pissed at herself for potentially believing the cruel prank that she was apparently pulling, than at Chloe for actually pulling it.

“Like, what, did you _photoshop_ this, or something?” Victoria asked.  “Trying to get back at me for not liking your girlfriend?”

_She believes it, kind of,_ Max thought.  _If she didn’t, the notion that it was Nathan in that photo wouldn’t have crossed her mind._

“You _know_ what this is,” Chloe said.  “This is a picture of Nathan taken in 1912.  He helped found Arcadia Bay, apparently.”

“This is _such_ bullshit,” Victoria said.  “You find a picture of a guy who kinda-sorta looks like Nathan and say, what?  _‘Hey, Victoria, your friend Nathan is a fucking_ time-traveler, _I’ll take my check now!”  
_

“Victoria,” Chloe said low and slow, like she was trying to walk her through the thornier and trickier aspects of two and two equaling four.  “Nathan Prescott just went over a hundred years in the wrong direction.  Do you honestly think I care about getting paid right now?”

“No,” Victoria said, “you’re _not_ as shocked as I am, because I’m not shocked at all, because _that’s not Nathan!”_

Chloe sighed and looked down.  Max had lived with Chloe Price long enough to know what she was thinking.

_If someone came to me with some story about time-travel, how would I need it proven to me?_

_Wait, someone_ did _come to me with a story about time-travel!  And I remember_ precisely _how it was proven to me!_

Chloe looked at Max with upraised eyebrows.  The look was not returned.

_“No,”_ Max said.

* * *

Chloe had a piece of paper in front of her.  Max had no idea where she had gotten it.

This… was not good.

“Okay,” Chloe said as she stood in front of Warren and Victoria.  “Warren…”

“Yeah?” Warren asked.  It was the first word he had said since Chloe dropped the time-travel bomb.

“You have…” Chloe said as she read from the piece of paper, “Seventy-six cents in your left front pocket.  That’s a quarter, two dimes, a nickel, and a penny.  In your _right_ front pocket is your wallet, and the credit card closest to the front is the one from Best Buy.”

Warren looked at Chloe with no small amount of suspicion before he dug into his pockets.  Chloe then turned to Victoria.

“Victoria,” Chloe said, smiling.  “In your purse… four words… _‘Always Thin Daily Liners.’”_

The look Victoria had on her face could have murdered an entire platoon of Navy Seals.  As that look tried to murder Chloe (and as Warren counted the change in his hand with a look of sheer amazement), Max looked over Chloe’s shoulder at the piece of paper.

It seemed that not only had Chloe remembered that a Traveler could take physical objects with them as they rewound time, but she had improved on Max’s _Guess-What’s-In-Your-Pockets_ trick.

In addition to rewinding time with a piece of paper that had this list of contents on the persons of Victoria and Warren, she had actually gotten Victoria and Warren to _sign_ it.  Max had forgotten to be peeved at Chloe rewinding time, it was so well-played.

“How did you _know?”_ Warren asked.

Chloe handed Warren the piece of paper.  “Just to prove this isn’t a magic trick.”

The look of amazement on Warren’s face grew, but Victoria?  Victoria’s face was impassive.  Blank. 

“No,” Victoria said, her eyes on the carpet.  The rest of the room held its breath as she took her chest deliberately heaved up and down, betraying the inner tumult that her face was so desperately trying to hide.

_She believes it,_ Max thought, _and she’s pissed at herself for believing.  She’d rather be wrong forever in a world that makes sense to her than be right in this one._

Victoria surveyed the room.  “This is just… I don’t even _know_ what this is.”

She turned toward the door.  Max knew she was about to walk out, and she rummaged through her memories to find something that could make her believe.  That could put everyone on the same page.  Finally, as Victoria’s hand reached the doorknob, Max seized on something.

_“Alveoli!”_

Everyone turned to look at Max.  Max looked at Warren.

“Remember last November, I called you out of the blue and asked you about timelines?  You said that if someone screwed with the timeline, then people would have dreams of other versions of events.”

She walked up to Warren.

“Have you had a nightmare recently where you saved me from Nathan in the Blackwell parking lot?  Or… or beating the shit out of him in the boy’s dorm in front of me and Chloe?”

Warren looked unsure of himself.  As though he’d given out his pin number by accident.  Max walked up to Victoria.

“And you.  Have you had dreams about… about sitting in front of the Bradford Dorm with Taylor and Courtney, and a bucket of paint coming down from a scaffold and ruining one of your cashmere sweaters?”

Max took another step towards her.

“Have you had a dream about _him?_ About _Jefferson_ _?_ Did… Did you dream about dying?”

* * *

Chloe was standing halfway across the room, but she saw it coming before Max did.

Victoria blinked a couple of times, stunned…

…and then slapped Max dead across the face.  The sound made Chloe and Warren jump in surprise.

It must have been as hard as it was loud, because Max tripped over her own feet and had to steady herself against the wall.

Victoria looked every bit as surprised that she did it as everyone else in the room.  She looked at Max with the tiniest bit of concern, before she re-steeled herself and opened the front door, making her exit.

Chloe ran to Max and put her arm around her shoulder as she pondered the difficult position she was in.

This clearly would not stand, and there would have to be a time (sometime before Saturday, for sure) when Chloe would have to knock Victoria Chase _the entire fuck out._ Chloe brooked no violence against Max, and the fact that Victoria had not resorted to shooting or strangling her meant that, unlike Lorraine Foster, Victoria would get to keep her life and at least two of her limbs.  But this was an aggravation Chloe did not need.

On the other hand…

Chloe sized up the room, and stood to the left of where Victoria had been standing.  Chloe’s hand came up.

The part of Max’s face that wasn’t already swelling rose in anticipation and surprise.

“Chloe, n—“

**_Booommm…_ **

Shimmer.  Counter-clockwise spiral.  An ethereal version of herself next to Max.  Walking backwards to resume a position next to Warren.  Victoria walking backwards through the front door.  Her hand coming away from Max’s face to the crest of the blow.

_Annnd, release._

**Thwack!**

Chloe caught Victoria’s wrist as her hand was coming down.  She gripped it hard to show her just whose house this was.  Chloe and Victoria’s eyes met.  Chloe had steel in hers, and it was nice to know that Victoria had the decency to look the slightest bit ashamed of herself.

Victoria yanked her wrist out of Chloe’s grasp and exited the house.  Chloe looked at Max, whose eyes were wide with surprise, to Warren, who looked _shocked._

_Of course he does,_ Chloe thought.  _I was standing right next to him a second ago.  What I just did was impossible to him on quite a few levels._

“Does she always resort to violence like that?” Chloe asked.

Warren snapped out of it.  “Um… No.  She gets angry when she gets scared, but… that’s no excuse for what she tried to do to you.  That’s pretty far from okay.  I’m sorry.”

Chloe was not above awarding points to Warren.  Most people were dumb enough to follow their significant other down the hole.  Past assault on someone else, even.

“Shouldn’t you be going after her?” Max asked.

Warren sighed.  “The trick is knowing when she wants to be alone.  This is one of those times.”

The look on Warren’s face was that of a man with a mind thoroughly blown.  He looked from Chloe to Max.

“So,” he said.  “Time-travel.  That… that’s a thing now, I guess.”

* * *

Max recounted the story of six years ago, when both she and Warren had been students at Blackwell, and when Max had broken the world.  Watching Max tell this story to a Warren who seemed open-minded enough to believe it (and cringe when Max brought up how strongly he had come on in the attempt to win her heart), Chloe felt as though she were eavesdropping on her own life.  Chloe answered whatever questions Warren asked of her (like if she remembered anything from that other timeline), but hearing someone speak with such authority about a Chloe-That-Could-Have-Been gave her the kind if chills that were warm on the outside.  She remembered the events recounted to Warren about how she and Max fell in love, and knew she was there for them, but it wasn’t the particular body in which she stood that had won that particular heart.  Chloe had to remind herself that, in spite of that small feeling of displacement, both she and Max had remembered the same things and were on the same page.

Both Chloe and Max took equal time telling Warren about the previous November.  Justin’s murder, The Bull, Denise Leonard, the returning memories, Jennifer Healy, Chloe’s new life as The Great Punk Detective.  Chloe had to keep telling Max that she didn’t _feel_ like a badass when she jumped off of Koch’s Folly, or pistol-whipped Grady in the Dew Drop.  It only looked like that from the outside.  _Inside,_ she had been terrified…

Finally, Chloe took over with the events from the previous Sunday onward, omitting a couple of crucial details.  Namely Tobanga, and the dreams of the oncoming storm.  She didn’t want Max wasting whatever time they had left trying to find an answer… or collapsing in on herself when she couldn’t come up with one.

The entire story from beginning to end took roughly an hour and fifteen minutes, after which Warren, who had been sitting on the couch while the two women stood, leaned back and stared at the ceiling, mulling the entire thing over.

“I have to say,” Chloe said, “you’re handling this with a shit-ton of grace for what we just dropped on you.  I mean, you’re a science teacher…”

“Yeah,” Warren said.  “I go by evidence.  Which you’ve provided.  I’m not gonna say it isn’t going to take some getting used to, but this is the new normal.  Time-travel exists.  As a weirdly occurring natural phenomenon endemic to young women in Arcadia Bay.  It’s not like I won’t have a whole boat-load of questions for both of you, but right now?  We need to get down to the bottom of the Nathan thing.”

Chloe and Max looked at each other.  “How do you propose we do that?” Max asked.

“Well,” Warren said, “to start, the guy in that photograph isn’t Nathan Prescott.”

Chloe and Max looked at each other again.  “Um… Yes it is,” said Chloe.

“Oh, it’s Nathan,” Warren said, “but I highly doubt that that’s the name Nathan went by in 1912.  We need to find out everything there is to know about what Nathan did back then.”

“What do you hope to find?” Max asked.

“I don’t know,” Warren said.  “I’ll know when I find it.  Can I use your laptop?”

“Ummm… Sure,” Max said.

Warren smiled.  “Thank you very much.  I work faster on my own, so is there somewhere in the house I can do this?”

* * *

Chloe and Max ceded the living room to Warren, and while he sat on the couch, furiously researching away on Max’s laptop, the two women retired to the bedroom.  They laid on the bed, staring at… well… nothing in particular.

“Warren knows about time-travel, now,” Max said.  “So does Victoria, though she doesn’t believe it.”

“I _had_ to tell them,” Chloe said.

“Why?” Max asked. 

“Because Victoria hired me to find Nathan.  I found Nathan.  So I had to tell her where… fuck, _when_ I found him.”

“You do realize you didn’t actually get _paid_ for finding Nathan?” Max asked.

“I know,” Chloe said.  “Doesn’t matter.  I don’t leave a job half-finished.  Even if I’m the only one who knows about it.”

“Well aren’t _you_ just the consummate professional?”

Chloe looked at Max.  “That’s me.  Miss Oregon Work-Ethic 2019.  Even have the tiara and everything.”

Max smiled, and they both looked up at the ceiling again.

“Well, now we know why Haverford wouldn’t let Victoria in to see Nathan,” Max said.  “They wanted to cover up the fact that he vanished into thin air.”

Chloe’s head came up to begin a nod… but it didn’t come down to complete it.

_No…_

_No, something’s not right._

Something clicked within Chloe to the extent that she had to sit up and assemble her thoughts.  Max followed suit.

“Chloe?  What is it?”

Chloe didn’t answer right away.  She was still jamming her reasoning into place like the last few pesky rows in a Rubik’s Cube.

“No,” Chloe said.  “They didn’t let Victoria in for three weeks for some other reason.  He’s only been missing since Sunday night.”

Max leaned in closer to Chloe.  “How do you know?”

Chloe looked at Max with eyes wide and _finally_ comprehending.  “The _car._ Paul Sefton’s car.”

“That weird crash Trevor called you in to look at?” Max asked.

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “It was stolen from Haverford while he was on his shift Sunday night.  The keys were still in the ignition.  Max… Nathan _escaped.”_

Judging from the look on her face, Max was trying to put this one together as well.

“He got the keys off of Sefton somehow,” Chloe said, “and took the car.  He drove to Arcadia Bay, got within the city limits…”

“…and he pulled a Sunshine Ray,” Max said.

“Right,” Chloe said.  “Trevor said he was scared of that car because the only way it could have crashed into that tree the way it did because the driver would have had to have just _disappeared_ from the driver’s seat.  That’s _exactly_ what happened!  It’s the only thing that fits!”

The look on Chloe’s face must have been infectious, because Max’s smile was wide.

“You’re _really_ good at this.”

“No,” Chloe said.  “I’m the _best._ That’s a very important distinction.”

Max lay back down on the bed again.

“Chloe?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for stopping Victoria from slapping me,” Max said.  “I mean, I know I get cranky whenever you use your powers, but that would have made things… not good… in a way I’m not comfortable with.”

“It saved me the effort of finding her later and kicking her until her extensions flew off,” Chloe said.

“I don’t think those are extensions.”

“You know what I mean,” Chloe said.  “The Chloe Price Girlfriend Package includes bodyguard privileges.  At least with the rewind, I can say no-harm-no-foul, and make things less awkward between you and Warren.”

Max sighed.  “I’m gonna bend over backwards to be fair to Victoria, here, and say that you getting her to tell her what kind of pad she uses was an embarrassment that she wasn’t going to put up with.  Not that I’m blaming you, or anything, but it takes more than one straw to break a camel’s back.”

“Well… I asked her to show me a credit card before I rewound, but I saw the pad in her purse.  I figured that there might have been a way that she’d show me a credit card, but there was _no way in hell_ she’d tell me about _that._   So… Dramatic effect.  Which worked, I guess.”

Max nodded.

“Still, though,” Chloe said.  “Good for Victoria.  Not everyone carries those around.  She’s, like, on the ball.  Though given how much Victoria spends on clothes, it’d be a huge waste of money to be caught unaware in the middle of the day.”

Max nodded again.  “Imagine how much she spends on underwear.”

Chloe looked at Max.  She knew that Max had a habit of expressing innocent thoughts in weird ways, and it would be easy enough to let this one slide, but…

_I’m gonna pick on her about it anyway!_

Chloe smirked.  “Do you… imagine Victoria’s underwear often?”

Max looked at Chloe uncomprehendingly and actually started speaking before she got it.  “Wh—Oh, _God,_ no.  _Victoria_ _?”_

Chloe smiled, trying to tell Max with her face that she was trying to keep this all in good fun.  “Hey, I’m not here to judge… Just watch… And maybe record for my own personal use.”

“You shush,” Max said.  “With a capital _‘you shush.’”_

Chloe scratched the bridge of her nose underneath her glasses.  “The two of you fighting all these years, I knew there was something more there than her just being a royal bitch.”

Max tilted her head, took Chloe’s hand, and put it on her ass.

“You getting to do this ever again,” Max said, “depends on you being _very_ quiet for the next… _ever again."_

Chloe smiled, nodded, and leaned in for a kiss, which required no talking at all…

…until they were interrupted by a knock at the bedroom door.

Chloe sat straight up on the bed.  Her hand flew off of Max’s ass as though it had threatened to grow spikes.

“C-Come in,” Chloe said.

Warren opened the door.  He had a notepad in his hand, and the look on his face was strange.

“I, uh, have info,” Warren said.

“Lay it on us,” Max said as she sat up in bed.

Warren leaned against the doorframe and began to go over what he had written down.

“The name Nathan was going by in the photo was Joshua Trent,” Warren said.  “I don’t have an exact birth date here, but in 1908, Joshua Trent bought the Jacinto Logging Company, renaming it the Trent Logging Company.  The newspaper archive I got this from said he was twenty-five, so that must put the birth date he gave at 1892 or ’93.”

“How the hell did he get enough money to buy a logging company?” Max asked.

“He’s a Prescott,” Chloe said.  “Money comes to _them.”_

“Anyway,” Warren said, “he helped found Arcadia Bay.  There’s, uh… some boring stuff about helping out with zoning, buying plots of land for public use, real SimCity shit.  But yeah, Nathan Prescott, living under an assumed name, helped found Arcadia Bay.”

The look on Warren’s face when he said it seemed harried.  Flustered.  More than a little sad.

“What is it?” Max asked.

Warren looked back at the pad.  “On October seventeenth, 1953, Joshua Trent died in his sleep of a heart attack.  He was, uh… He was seventy.”

Chloe felt herself get a little cold.  She felt stupid, pointing out Nathan in a photo taken in 1912, and not expecting this as a result.

“But… can’t he pop up again like Sunshine Ray did?” Max asked.

Warren sighed.  “If he was going to pop up back here, then Joshua Trent would be just another missing person’s case.  There would be no obituary.  Nathan’s… Nathan’s dead.”

Max seemed to deflate.  But Chloe expected this.  Max was all-loving, even to two separate people who tried to kill her.  What she _didn’t_ expect was that Warren would take this news to heart as well.

Warren looked at Max.  “I have to be the one to tell Victoria,” he said.  “This will… God, I don’t know _how_ she’ll react to this.  But it should come from her husband.  Someone who loves her should tell her that one of her best friends is dead.”

Max nodded.  Chloe turned over Nathan’s death in her head, and felt…

_How I feel isn’t important.  Something doesn’t add up._

Chloe looked at Warren.  “That car crash I told you about?  The one that didn’t appear to have a driver?  Nathan was driving the car.  He got unstuck in time when the car went into that tree.”

Warren appeared to be grateful to take his mind off of having to give Victoria such bad news.  “That… actually makes a lot of sense.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “But he was driving _into_ Arcadia Bay.  A place where everyone hates him, and everyone would call the cops if they saw him.  Why would he do that?”

Max and Warren looked at each other.  They didn’t have an answer.

“Nathan wouldn’t have broken out of Haverford, only to risk getting thrown back in by coming back to Arcadia Bay,” Chloe said.  “He must have done it for a reason.  And if he got sucked back in time, then… then he must have left _something_ behind that _points_ to that reason. Warren, is there any place we could go?  Did you find anything that might help us out?”

Warren looked at the pad again.  “Um… Maybe.  Joshua Trent had a daughter in 1921.  A Nadine Trent-Calaway.”

“1921,” Max said.  “She’d be…”

“Ninety-eight,” Warren said. “And still alive.  She lives at Bayview Retirement Home.”

Max looked at Chloe.  “Wanna go to the Old Folks’ Home with me?”

Chloe nodded.  “Just let me put my contacts in.”


	16. The Letter

**Chapter 16: The Letter**

Chloe, Max, and Warren walked to the rear of the abandoned Blackwell main building (past the Bradford Dormitory, which still had kids in it) and got into The Taxi.  Chloe drove, Max rode shotgun, and Warren took up space in the back seat.

None of the three spoke.  All stared out whatever window they could, turning the madness and oddity of the situation over in their heads in silence.  Chloe didn’t even turn the radio on.

As Chloe pulled out of the parking lot, one thought was paramount in her mind.

Nathan Prescott was dead.

She’d dreamed of this day.  Waited for it.  And if she’d been the slightest bit religious, she’d have prayed for it.  She’d had the notion for six years now to piss on Nathan’s grave once he’d died, and now he was dead.  Not only that, but thanks to Arcadia Bay’s frosty and passive-aggressive relationship with linear time, Nathan’s grave had already been filled for almost sixty-six years.  It was just there waiting for her.

But Chloe remembered the suspicion with which she viewed Max on that hospital bed six years ago.  It was a pure good that had fallen into her life, but if Chloe could ferret out a way to find something illicit or self-serving within, she’d have done so.  It made for a less nonsensical world.  It had taken five years for her to come to grips with the fact that this good thing happened because another human being thought that a good thing _should_ happen to Chloe Price.

If the continued existence of her own life was something that wasn’t simple, then why should the death of someone she hated?

For Max’s sake, she had opted not to seek revenge on Nathan for killing Rachel, but her mind was her own, and any downfall he had suffered was something she would have enjoyed.  So why wasn’t she enjoying the death of the man she’d hated most on earth?

The thought that had begun to form was that Nathan, foul and evil little shit that he was, was part of her life.  It wasn’t a fact that she was happy with.  She was furious, truth be told.  But he was, nonetheless.  And now that part of her life was gone, and there was nothing she could fill it with.  Under the life-long antagonist column, there was nothing but a blank.

Something very important to the tapestry of her life had vanished, leaving her in a funk in which Chloe knew she should not be.  But she knew, deep in her bones, why she felt this way.

When pillars in one’s life start turning into dust, then one is getting old.

Chloe was about to lecture herself on the absurdity of feeling old in the middle of her twenties, when she wasn’t likely to live past Saturday, when The Taxi died on Sixth Street.

“What is it?”  Max asked.

Chloe put her foot on the brake and put The Taxi in park.  “I don’t know,” Chloe said.

“I have Triple-A,” Warren said from the backseat.  “I’ll just… huh…”

Chloe looked in the rearview mirror at Warren.  He was looking from his phone to Chloe with worry in his eyes.

“My phone’s dead,” Warren said.

Chloe got her phone out of the pocket of her black jacket.  She tried to turn it on, and… Nothin’ doin’.  The screen remained dark.

The Taxi turned back over again all on its own.  Chloe’s phone came back to life, and vibrated as it did so, making her jump.

“Now it’s back,” Warren said from the backseat as he held his phone.

Chloe’s brow furrowed.  _This is… weird._

“Guys?” Max asked.  She pointed out the window as The Taxi and both phones died again.

Chloe unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped out of The Taxi.  Max and Warren followed suit.

All of the buildings on Sixth Street were dark.  All of the lights, all of the signs.  Even the traffic lights were out.  One car coming out of a gas station had stalled on the small ramp lading out into the street.

Chloe felt the phone in her hand vibrate, heard The Taxi turn over again, and saw all of Sixth Street come back to life.

A chill ran up Chloe’s spine as the reality dawned on her.

_Well hello, third plague…_

* * *

The rolling blackouts (which affected even battery-powered devices, automobiles, and houses and businesses that weren’t on Arcadia Bay’s main power grid) lasted five minutes.

And while these blackouts weren’t as flashy or as violent as the dead birds of the previous day, or the red rain of the day before that, these blackouts were the first of the strange phenomena that afflicted Arcadia Bay in this late August of 2019 to claim actual human lives.

Four people in the Intensive Care Unit of Arcadia Bay’s Mercy Hospital had their life support equipment malfunction, and as this equipment was outdated, and thus, had no fail-safes installed to turn back on in the event of power restoration after a blackout, they stayed off.  The hospital’s attorneys were brought in to talk to staff about the no-doubt impending lawsuit.

Half the people in town knowledgeable about such things chalked the blackouts to a naturally occurring build-up of electromagnetic energy, only to be reasoned out of it by the other half, because not only would a pulse of electromagnetic energy kill an electrical device dead (and would not, say, turn them on and off), but electromagnetic energy did not occur naturally in such a way.  At which point more than one member of the first half admitted that they only offered the EMP theory because they saw _The Matrix,_ and they thought that’s how such a thing worked.

But the blackouts had another effect on the town.  The residents had taken the red rain and the falling birds in relative stride, but with the intermittent ineffectiveness of their phones, their tablets, their cars, and their computers, the citizens of Arcadia Bay felt that this brief five minute kick back into the Stone Age made them targets, somehow.  That these were less freak occurrences, and more specifically deployed signs of impending doom.

People were less inclined toward friendliness, less eager to talk, more on edge than they would have been under any other circumstances.  They felt their own insignificance in the face of something massive, something malevolent, advancing toward them and picking up speed…

* * *

Chloe parked The Taxi in one of the spots nearest the entrance that wasn’t reserved for the disabled or for expectant mothers.

The Bayview Senior Living Center was a flat building, but an expansive one, stretching for half of the city-block plot of land it was situated upon, on the edge of town near the highway.

Chloe could only think of the disappointed residents and their families, for Bayview Senior Living Center had no view of the bay. 

As she, Max, and Warren left The Taxi, Chloe’s phone started vibrating on the pocket of her black jacket.  She took it out.

Trevor.

“Hey, Max?” Chloe asked.  “I’m gonna take this out here.  I’ll catch up.”

“You sure?” Max asked.

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “It won’t be long.”

Chloe answered as Max and Warren walked away.

“How can I help you, Trevor?”

“Actually,” Trevor said, “I’m thinking I can help you.”

“How so?”

A pause as the sound of Trevor opening a file and shifting papers came in over the line.

“A… Joseph Thompson was murdered last night in his hotel room at the Embassy Suites.  Stabbed twice in the throat with what we’re guessing is a screwdriver.”

“And?” Chloe asked.

_“And,”_ Trevor said, “the hallway security cameras picked up someone about five-six wearing a black hoodie going into, and then coming out of, his room at the time of death.  We’re guessing it’s the same someone in a black hoodie on the gas station security camera who burned down the Two Whales.”

Chloe flipped that over in her head.  “How tall’s Lorraine Foster?”

“About the same, as Max’s statement goes.  Look, I know she’s dangerous, and I know I don’t need to tell you to look out for yourself and Max, but… well… I’m gonna say it anyway.”

Chloe smirked.  “Yeah, thanks M-“

_Wait…_

“Joseph Thompson?” Chloe asked.  “He’s a lawyer, right?  For an outfit called Trident Construction?”

The sound of papers being turned over crackled through Chloe’s phone.  “Yeah,” Trevor said.  “How did you know?”

Chloe sighed.  Telling Trevor the meat of it without going into time-travel and temporal black holes that sucked people up and spat them back out a century in the past would just send him on errands with no destination.  Chloe was sure all of this was connected somehow, but she still needed a few more big pieces to the puzzle before the whole picture became legible.  And letting Victoria and Warren peek behind the curtain was enough for one day.

“Look,” Chloe said.  “To say that the last few hours have been weird would be putting it _hella_ fucking mildly, okay?  I get something workable, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Of course,” Trevor said.  He didn’t even argue.  Chloe had been so hung up on giving and receiving love for most of her life that she figured she had forgotten about _respect._   If a cop stepping back and letting her do her detective thing wasn’t respect, then Chloe would have had a hard time defining it.

“You take care,” Chloe said.

“You, too.”

“And say Hi to Dana and the little one for me.”

“I will.”

They said their goodbyes, and Chloe hung up.

* * *

The preconceived notion was that retirement homes smelled like piss, and while Chloe had faith that there were some across the spread of the world that didn’t live down to the stereotype, Bayview was sadly not among their number.  A cocktail of smells hit Chloe as soon as she came through the automatic doors: voided bladder mixed with Lysol and a high, sweet smell that must have been the natural musk of the aged.  Any one of these smells would have been fine on their own, but their combination mixed with their strength forced Chloe to stop and collect herself.

Max and Warren saw her, and walked up along with a woman in green scrubs and a nametag clipped over her right breast telling the world entire that her name was Jane.

“You’re here with these two to see Nadine Trent-Calaway?” Jane asked. 

Chloe nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Okay, then,” Jane said with a smile.  “Right this way.”

The four of them, with Jane heading the pack, walked down the corridor toward Nadine’s room.

Chloe couldn’t help but notice how oppressive the place was.  Plastic flooring, taupe walls, and downright stifling fluorescent lights above them.  It was like being back in DesRosiers Elementary again.  Chloe hated elementary school, almost as though she had peered through the veil of time to see the utter tools that all of her classmates would grow up to be.  If she would one day grow old enough to actually return to an atmosphere such as that, then as far as Chloe was concerned, the Venusians couldn’t enslave this shithole planet fast enough.

The foursome took a right turn, and Nadine’s room was the last one on the right.  The door was marked not by a number, but by a rainbow sticker with _“Nadine”_ written in blue Sharpie.  Chloe had to suppress the urge to gag.

In a move clearly cribbed from _The David “Step-Douche” Madsen Guide to Care-Taking,_ Jane knocked on the door to Nadine’s room before immediately entering without permission.

What Chloe had expected was a withered and ancient woman in a hospital gown, sheets up to her waist, a heart-rate monitor slowly beeping.

What Chloe _got,_ was a small and densely decorated room with pictures, boxes, empty vases, books, and incense holders taking up odd positions.  And at its middle, sitting at a table, was a scrawny old lady in a teal sweatshirt and matching sweatpants.  Her thin white hair was cropped as close as a Roman soldier’s.  Thick glasses perched on a long nose.  She was reading an issue of the _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _Beacon._ Chloe figured _someone_ had to have, if it was still in print.

“Nadine,” Jane said in an annoying sing-song voice that anyone out of diapers would have instantly lost patience with.  “Are you doing okay?”

Nadine didn’t even look up.  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a Goddamn toddler.”

Jane whispered to Max.  “She’s a little feisty.”

_Ninety-eight years old and still talking shit,_ Chloe thought.  _There’s hope for me yet._

“You have visitors,” Jane said.

Nadine grunted.  “What the…”

But it was at this point that Nadine looked up and saw Chloe and Max.  She stared for a moment, before taking off her glasses, rubbing them on her sweatshirt, putting them back on again, and staring some more.  Her toothless mouth slowly creaked open.

Nadine didn’t look like she’d seen a ghost.  She looked like she’d seen the ghost of her childhood imaginary friend.

The old woman stood up.  Age had hunched her over, but even if she were standing up straight, Chloe couldn’t have imagined her breaking five feet.

“Thank you, Jane,” Nadine said.  “That will be all.”

Jane blinked a couple of times, apparently unused to any language from Nadine that wasn’t salty.  She looked from Nadine, to the three people she had brought into the room, before making her exit.

Nadine still stared after Jane left the room.  Then she raised her hands and motioned the three of them to come closer.  Which they did.

“Wait,” Nadine said. 

They stopped.

Nadine pointed at Warren.  “Not you.”

Warren stood back while Chloe and Max continued their advance.  They reached a shaft of light coming in through the window before they took it upon themselves to stop.

Nadine shuffled toward them, her wine-colored slippers scuffing on the linoleum as she went.  She looked them up and down with cold eyes that were magnified by the thick glasses she wore.  Chloe scratched her forehead underneath her beanie, and had one of the weirder thoughts that she imagined she could have about a ninety-eight-year-old woman:

_She has her father’s eyes._

Nadine seemed to have taken a particular interest in Chloe.  The old woman looked her up and down, seemingly in argument with herself about what to say.  Finally, she began.

“He said… he said your hair would be _blue.”_

Contrary to what many would have thought from the outside looking in, it was the foul-mouthed, hot-tempered Chloe Price who was deathly afraid of spiders, and it was the timid, all-loving Max Caulfield who had to step on them before Chloe would even think of setting foot in the room again.  There was a horrifying feeling whenever Chloe saw a spider, as though her skin wanted to bunch into a ball without having the courtesy of leaving her skeleton to do so.

Up until this point, Nathan Prescott getting sucked back to the early part of the twentieth century had been an idea with no reality, but now?  Now it gave her the same feeling as whenever she saw a spider.  Every cell in her body was writing her brain a strongly-worded letter requesting her to get the fuck out of Dodge.  Before she could, Nadine pointed beyond the two women and snapped her fingers.

“You,” Nadine said to Warren.  “Over there, underneath some old magazines, is a pink shoebox.  Could you grab it for me?  I’d get it myself, but I’m ninety-eight, as you can see.  Do you mind?”

Warren didn’t move.  He looked at Chloe and Max.

“Do you need their permission, son?” Nadine asked.

“He does, apparently,” Max said.  “It’s okay, Warren.  Do as the lady says.”

Warren nodded and went to work unearthing the box.

“Do your kids visit?” Chloe asked, trying to steer the conversation into less terrifying and existentially draining waters.

“I outlived both of them,” Nadine said.  “Cancer took Eli eleven years ago.  Margaret fell down the stairs of her house in 2016.  I have grandkids, but they never visit.  But they barely know me, so I can’t say I blame them.”

“I’m sorry,” Max said.

“Me too,” said Nadine.

Warren wordlessly brought the shoebox to Nadine.

“Good,” she said.  “Bring it over here.”

Warren and Nadine slowly went to the table.  Warren set the box down and Nadine lifted the lid and started sifting through what was inside.

She came up with an old, thick, yellowing envelope.  She held it in her hands as though it were a talisman to keep demons at bay.

“My father gave me this the day my husband George came home from Japan,” Nadine said.  “And he told me that one day, if I lived long enough, a short woman with blue eyes and freckles, and a tall woman with blue eyes and blue hair would come to see me.  Now that you’re here, five out of six ain’t bad.”

Nadine looked down at the envelope again.  “I thought he was an old fool at the time, but I took it to humor him.  Turns out I myself had to become an old fool before I saw that he was right.  I… I don’t know _how,_ but… he _was._ ”

Nadine looked at Chloe and Max, and held out the envelope.

“Young ladies,” Nadine said.  “I think this is for you.”

* * *

_-To whom it may concern._

_But given the propensity for the bizarre in_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _, and the people to whom that oddity occurs, the most appropriate address may be:_

_-Dear, Max and Chloe._

_I write this letter on August 14th, 1945.  V-J Day.  There’s talk of a formal surrender ceremony in_ _Tokyo_ _Bay_ _next month.  The war is over.  Our boys are coming home.  My daughter is in the parlor now, and she cannot keep from smiling.  Her husband George was stationed in the Pacific.  The two will see each other again._

_I am sixty-two years old.  What’s left of my hair is white.  I’ve grown plump in my advanced years.  And it is on this day, living through an event that I had read of in history books during my formative years, that the reality—not the mathematical certainty, but the_ reality _—has set in that I will never again see the things that were staples of my childhood.  I will never see an iPhone, or an Xbox, or a computer.  I will die without having caught up with myself.  It is a feeling that I cannot fully describe.  I doubt quite highly that anyone’s felt it before._

_I know that I have lived almost forty years in this time and place without telling anyone my story._

_And I know, and fear, and am almost welcoming of the fact that by the time this letter reaches its conclusion, it will be the last time I sign anything under the name given to me by my parents at birth._

_On August 25 th, 2019, for reasons that will be made clear by letter’s end, I escaped from the Cyrus Haverford Memorial Mental Health Facility, where I was committed in the wake of a number of crimes after being deemed unfit to stand trial, most notably for the sexual assault of Kate Marsh, the shooting of Max Caulfield, and the… the killing of Rachel Amber._

_I pulled the fire alarm, and as the rest of the hospital was being evacuated, I broke into my therapist’s office to retrieve some things, and using the keys I lifted off of an orderly some hours before, I stole a car in the parking lot, and drove to Arcadia Bay._

_On_ _August 25 th, 2019_ _, I entered the city limits of_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _._

_On_ _March 2 nd, 1906_ _, I landed in a bale of hay outside of a barn._

_It was the middle of a cold day.  I was in a pair of jeans (or_ ‘dungarees,’ _as they called them), and a t-shirt.  I looked around the barn, and saw no one.  Somehow, I_ knew _that this was still_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _,_ knew _that I had come unstuck from time’s linearity, yet had no idea how or why.  Thirty-eight years later, I still do not._

_I found a beaten trail and followed it in the direction I knew the town to be in.  The air smelled strange, and thought along the hour’s trek back to_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _gave me a reason: The air was not polluted.  Not from chimney smoke, nor from car exhaust._

_Arcadia_ _Bay_ _looked like the set of one of the old Westerns that my father showed me when I was a child.  Just one dirt lane separating two sides of town.  All of the shops and storefronts were made of wood, and the post office even had a hitching post.  I’m certain that I had preconceptions of the early twentieth century in_ _America_ _during my time in the twenty-first, but I must have imagined automobiles springing from the earth fully formed the very moment years started beginning with the number nineteen.  On March 2 nd, 1906 (as a newspaper in front of the post office told me), people got around on horseback._

_I took refuge in the church behind the general store.  The priest, Father Jespersen, took pity on me, and gave me clean clothes when I said I’d been robbed on the road.  Being that I didn’t have a penny to my name, I didn’t feel nearly as guilty about lying to a priest and receiving garments meant for the poor as I probably should have._

_I gave him the name “Joshua Trent.”  Joshua, because it’s my middle name, and Trent, because… well, to be honest, I can’t quite remember.  Because this was in a time and a part of the country that didn’t have social security numbers or birth certificates, no one had a reason not to believe me.  I’ve been going by the name ever since._

_With Father Jespersen’s assistance, I got a job as a log scaler for the Jacinto Logging Company, run by a fine man named Ross Martin.  He was a good man, a kind man, but not a very astute businessman, and he confided in me that the Jacinto Logging Company never operated at above a marginal profit._

_I had long considered it a stereotype that hard, manual labor would set a body and a soul at ease, but it is with the utmost humility that I must state that in reference to my own personal journey, the stereotype is true.  Working for that logging company brought me focus and fulfillment, and each day that I toiled was a day that I spent further away form the place and the time and the people that hurt me.  Smiling was no longer held as a weakness in my mind, and aching muscles were a badge of pride._

_Before the narrative of my life is to go further, I must first impart a strange and altogether puzzling tidbit of information about my father, Sean Prescott._

_He was, or is, or will be, a cruel man.  His obsession with success and wealth dictated his life, and even after I was committed to the state for unspeakable crimes, he would not have rested until I carried his legacy, and the legacy of the_ _Prescott_ _family, into the future.  He viewed weakness not as a failing, but as a bone-deep betrayal that was performed to intentionally spite him.  There is no room in his worldview for underdogs, for underdogs wait outside his own margins, itching to take what belongs to the powerful by birth._

_Which renders his soft spot for, and fascination with, the_ _Chicago_ _Cubs so inexplicably odd.  At the point that I made my trip to the past, the_ _Chicago_ _Cubs had not won a World Series in going on one-hundred-eleven years.  Given what little I knew of the game outside of his at times incessant ramblings on the subject, I would have figured that my father was built to be a fan of the_ _New York_ _Yankees.  They were the richest team that always won.  But he lectured me on the history of the Cubs, and smiled even when they lost.  My theory on this point may be deemed uncharitable to those who didn’t know the man, but I did, and there are few less worthy of charity than Sean Prescott.  I think that somewhere within himself, he knew how foul he was, and he hitched himself to perennial losers like the Cubs to make himself feel more human._

_I relay all of this to say that I knew that the Cubs would win the 1908 World Series in five games.  I pulled, what my old friend Hayden Jones would call, a_ “Biff Tannen.”

_I saved every penny I could from early 1906 until the September of 1908 when I asked Mr. Martin for a leave of absence.  I rode in a carriage from_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _to the train station twenty miles down the beaten path, where a train took me to_ _Portland_ _, which was more in line with my preconceived notions of_ _America_ _during the early nineteen-hundreds.  I found a bookie, bet all I had for the Cubs to take the Series in five, and stayed at a hotel until they did.  I rolled in the morning after, and the man nearly spat at me as he handed me my winnings.  He said that the only reason he knew the Series hadn’t been fixed was because more people would have come in to collect._

_I went from one of the poorest men in_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _to the absolute richest.  I bought the Jacinto Logging Company from Mr. Martin for a great deal more than he asked for, which provided for his happy retirement until he died of a stroke in San Francisco in ’28.  So flush was I with magnanimity that I even made a considerable donation to the church, whose clothes I took under false pretenses._

_I don’t know if business is a gift that can be considered hereditary, but in my case, it must be.  I didn’t so much trim the fact of the Jacinto Logging Company as I did shift it around. I was so good that I managed to triple profits inside of a year with no one losing their jobs in the process.  I renamed it_ “The Trent Logging Company,” _because, to be honest, it was expected of me._

_My success drew attention, however.  In 1910, a concern of seven other men came to me, all local business owners, in the interests of turning_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _from an out-of-the-way fishing post to a full-fledged, self-governing town._

_I was the one who dealt with_ “zoning,” _a handy little turn-of-the-century euphemism for paying people to vote a certain way.  Was it underhanded?  Yes, but believe it or not, it wasn’t illegal.  Arcadia Bay was not yet a town, after all._

_It was we eight who came to be known as_ “The Founding Fathers of Arcadia Bay.”  _It is odd.  I grew up in_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _, saw the pictures of the town’s founders, and never once looked too closely at their faces, never once bothered to learn their names.  Was I in those pictures the whole time?  By coming here, did I displace someone else?  Given that what little I knew of the town’s history does not contradict the events that I have lived through in the twentieth century, I must imagine it is the former.  I would say that it is destiny, but such questions are far too big for me to even hazard a guess in the wake of their enormity._

_The first of the notable town luminaries That I've met, whose names I’d known before I came here, was Philippe DesRosiers.  Not only was he the architect of the lighthouse up at Koch’s Folly, which was built in 1922, and the man for whom the local elementary school was named, but I was the one who hired him out of Montreal in the first place.  In my childhood, I viewed that lighthouse as a place of wonder and mystery, but being as I’ve seen first-hand how big a pain it was to build, well, truth be told, I hate the damned thing._

_The second… was my Great-Great-Grandfather, Martin Lewis Prescott.  He was in his fifties when I met him in 1925.  His eyes were cold, his mouth perpetually trapped in a vicious, miserly frown.  I had done a lot of reading during my five years at Haverford, some of which was by George Orwell, who said that by the age of fifty, every man has the face he deserves.  I wonder what crimes Martin Lewis Prescott had committed to deserve such a cold, ugly face.  I wonder how much of what I have done in life has shown up on my face now that I am in my sixties._

_I married late in life, or at least late by the standards of the time in which I found myself.  I met Valerie Hebner in the spring of 1919.  I was thirty-six years old, and she was thirty-four.  I’d never given much thought to double-standards in my former existence, but life in that part of the century was startlingly less subtle than it was in the twenty-first, strange though that may be for you to believe.  I was congratulated as a bachelor, she was derided as a spinster, and both were done in public, in front of so-called polite company._

_I loved Valerie.  I still do.  She’s upstairs now, listening to Walter Winchell on the radio.  She was independent, fierce, ahead of her time, and this is coming from someone who can make that particular judgment call with some level of accuracy.  And she’s_ funny.  _So funny that I privately grieved the years I spent not laughing.  We married in the summer._

_And the following spring, Valerie gave birth to Nadine Victoria Trent._

_It has been said that the first time a man holds his child in his arms is the last time that man lives for himself.  This much is true.  But in my particular case, the unconditional love was tempered with the deepest and coldest of fears…_

_Abuse is a cycle.  I know this much from the therapy sessions I’d had from my teen years, well into my twenties at Haverford.  I did not know who I was to say how well I would treat my own daughter, given how reprehensibly my father treated me.  In truth, I still don’t._

_God help me, I tried as hard as I could.  I supported her interests. I did my best to guide her instead of controlling her, to the point that it caused a few small scandals around town.  I was entreated by the upper-crust of_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _society (a society I helped bring into being, mind you) to_ “keep my daughter well in hand.”  _For reasons that would have seemed silly to me as a young man in 2019, and seem downright laughable to me as an old man in 1945.  Reasons such as refusing to ride a horse side-saddle, or her penchant for trousers during wintertime.  Both my daughter and my wife would either faint or loudly chide me for saying so, but we don’t have central heating in this time period, and it gets fucking cold here.  My daughter can wear all the pants she wants to._

_So grievous was it that, at a society gathering hosted by my wife in our home, a young and distinguished doctor named Cyrus Haverford suggested a new procedure to curb my daughter’s willfulness.  He called it a “frontal lobotomy.”_

_Doctor Haverford left my home with a black eye._

_In all honesty, I cannot abide by the demands made of my daughter in the twentieth century, because I cannot abide by the demands made of myself in the twenty-first.  My madness… and my crimes… are testament to that._

_I still see her, you know.  In crowds, in the corners of rooms in which I could have sworn I was alone.  Black cutoff jeans over black leggings, that ridiculous red flannel over a t-shirt she sometimes wore that said_ “LEOS DO IT WITH A ROAR!” _in big bold letters.  That blue feather earring, dangling from her ear.  And that face that seemed to dare, to dream, to hold secrets.  Rachel Amber is the physical and spiritual human wage of the horror that is my life.  A light in the universe that I foolishly and recklessly put out.  That I did it by accident, that I loved her, is neither excuse, nor reason.  There is a feeling well-founded that no matter how much good I try to do, nothing will ever compare to the evil that I have committed.  When I was eighteen, I thought I would never forgive myself for killing her.  Now that I am sixty-two, I knew that that was one of the few things I was right about.  I fear that I cannot, and must not, ask the two of you to do something of which I am incapable.  Hate me forever.  I have earned as much._

_But even though my daughter smiled more than she laughed during her childhood, even though she tells me she loves me, I still wonder in the encroaching twilight of my life whether I damaged her some way in which I was not aware.  I remember when I was very young, sitting very still in my bedroom, not making a sound, not knowing what it was that would bring about a screaming fit or a cutting remark from my father.  If I made no moves, if I made no sounds, then I couldn’t disappoint him.  If I were to learn that Nadine had done the same thing, even once in her life, then it would be the death of me._

_Which brings me full circle.  To my past.  To your future.  Because today is V-J Day.  And I know what that means._

_In order to resolve this latest conflict upon the world stage, the_ _United States of America_ _saw fit to dissolve two Japanese cities in nuclear fire.  I can only imagine the citizens of those cities looking up in uncomprehending fear at the wall of destruction that engulfed them._

_And in the darkest and coldest recesses of my imagination, I think that_ _Hiroshima_ _and_ _Nagasaki_ _… may not have been too dissimilar to_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _._

_My father is planning something.  He visited me at Haverford some three weeks before my escape to tell me as much, and said that he would spirit me away from the hospital with the help of my therapist, Doctor Darrin Partridge (who, it was revealed to me, was in the Vortex Club with my father and Mark Jefferson during their time at Blackwell), to join his side once more.  I defied him, and for this defiance, he altered my approved visitor’s list, and took_ _Victoria_ _away from me._

_On the night of my escape, I snuck into Dr. Partridge’s office to find any information about what my father was planning.  I found this information in an accordion file in the lowest drawer of his desk.  It was marked_ “Arcadia Bay.”  _I fear that, for an educated man, Dr. Partridge is not very bright.  Something that he and Dr. Haverford himself share._

_I absconded with the file, but I did not have it on me in the orderly's car when I disappeared in 2019 and re-appeared in 1906.  If I was recaptured, I needed to make sure the file was in a safe place, so I could contact_ _Victoria_ _to find it, and indicate my father and Dr. Partridge._

_It’s buried in the woods behind the rest area near Exit 21, a good twenty miles outside of_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _.  Look for the patch of fresh earth about five yards in._

_There was a time when I would have given less than a damn about the fate of_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _, but that time is not_ this _time.  My father is obsessed with a storm, and a Traveler than can bend time.  Even under his thrall, I could never fully convince myself that it was true, but I’m writing this letter fifty years before I was born, so it must be._

_Though it may be by storm instead of bomb, I cannot allow the fate of_ _Hiroshima_ _and_ _Nagasaki_ _to befall_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _._

_I helped build this town, you see._

_Stop my father.  Make it hurt._

_And tell_ _Victoria_ _…_

_I have stared at this piece of paper for twenty minutes trying to finish that sentence.  Victoria Chase stood by me when no one else would.  She was the only one who visited me at Haverford, save for a single visit from my father, and one from the two of you (where you asked about The Traveler, oddly enough).  I had a brother’s love for her.  I still do.  And she loved me as a fierce sister, so much so that she developed a hatred for Rachel upon hearing of my feelings for her, because she thought Rachel would take me away from her._

_Tell_ _Victoria_ _that never would have happened.  And tell her that I hope that with this letter, with these actions, I may finally, at long last, have lived up to the faith she had in me._

_And tell Warren Graham how lucky he is._

_So I come to this letter’s end.  I began fearing this moment, and now?  Now I embrace it.  The swirl of emotions I have at using the name given to me at birth for the final time has narrowed to one._

_I feel free._

_For the final time, I am…_

_-Nathan Joshua Prescott_

* * *

 

Max and Warren were reading the letter over Chloe’s shoulders.  Tears were welling in Max’s eyes.  Warren just looked numb.

Chloe folded the letter up, put it back in the envelope, and looked at Nadine, who had sat down at her table.

“Did you…”

“No,” Nadine said.  “I thought he wrote it to you, and judging from the looks on your faces, I was right.  It’s none of my business.”

Chloe nodded.  Max was rubbing her arms.  Warren scratched the back of his neck.

“Um…” Max said.  “Thank you for your time, but I think we need to go.”

Nadine smiled.  “Stop in any time.  And thank you.  You should have seen the look in my father’s eyes when he gave me that envelope.  It’s nice to know that it’s in the intended hands.  That’s one more mystery solved.”

Chloe smiled.  The three of them headed toward the door.  Warren left first, Max left second, but Chloe held back.  She turned to Nadine.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot,” Nadine said.

“Your father… Was he a good man?  Was he, y’know… a good _father?”_

Nadine didn’t say anything at first.  But the eyes behind her glasses slowly lit up.  A smile drew itself across her face, revealing the gums in her mouth.

“He was the _best…”_

And Chloe believed her.  Instantly and unequivocally.

Because she could feel that same look on her face when she talked about her own father.

As she turned to the door, Chloe knew that, even after this letter and these revelations, even after seeing the look on Nadine’s face, she still hated Nathan Prescott with the utmost fury, and would never forgive him for Rachel.  Or for Kate.  Or for Max.

But she had to admit to herself that maybe her eyes were not the ones in which Nathan most needed redemption.  Maybe he never had to redeem himself in those eyes at all.

She found Max and Warren in the hallway.  Chloe looked at her girlfriend, she of the pixie cut, she of the freckles, she of the still-red eyes.

She of the often wonderful and sometimes infuriating habit of being right.

Something good _did_ come out of Nathan Prescott.

* * *

They had covered half the ground from Bayview to Blackwell in silence.  Chloe kept one hand on The Taxi’s steering wheel, and one hand firmly around Max’s

“There’s something you should know,” Chloe said quietly.

Max looked at her.

“This Lorraine girl,” Chloe said.  “She… She killed someone last night.  That lawyer for the construction company that visited Joyce.  She burned down the Two Whales.”

“Why?” Max asked.

“I don’t know.  But… she’s not an amateur anymore.  She’s a professional, if she wasn’t already.  But nothing bad’s gonna happen to you.  Not while I’m around.”

“I know,” Max said, and she squeezed Chloe’s hand.

A pause.

“I wonder why she’s doing this,” Max asked.

Chloe’s stomach turned at how quickly she used some of the leftover emotion from Nathan and put it onto Lorraine.  She felt a flicker of shame at how good it felt to _hate._

“I don’t care,” Chloe said.

And no one said a word until The Taxi pulled into its space behind the Blackwell main building.

The first thing Chloe did when they got out of the car in the evening twilight was hand the letter to Warren.

“You said you wanted to be the one to tell Victoria,” Chloe said.  “This would be the best way.”

Warren took the letter.  “Thank you, Chloe.”

“You’re welcome.”

The three walked back to the house adjacent to the Bradford Dormitory with only the late summer crickets making noise.

The three of them stopped when they saw that Victoria was sitting on the porch, waiting for them as she had waited for Chloe the previous Sunday afternoon.

“Victoria,” Warren said.  “Um…”

She cut her husband off with one upraised index finger.  She stood up and straightened her clothes.  She apparently wanted to look her best for what she was about to impart to them.

Victoria took a deep breath… then another… then looked Warren in the eye.

“I just saw a fucking Sasquatch.”


	17. Gigantopithecus

**Chapter 17: Gigantopithecus**

_Two Hours Earlier…_

The thing that Victoria Chase did when she was angry was the same thing she did when she was happy, or when she was sad.

Stepping out of her designer clothes and into a pair of jeans and an olive green t-shirt, she got her Sony A7R II out of the beige leather bag she kept on the floor of her expansive walk-in closet.  She collected a pair of beat-up hiking boots that she stored in a cardboard box near a wall of shoes, and took them out into the bedroom, where she sat down on the bed and put them on.

From there, she went to the kitchen and got a bottle of water from the refrigerator.  She put it in a sling that she wore over her shoulder, and stepped into the great outdoors.

Victoria’s property was massive, paid for by her work as Kate Bradford’s literary agent, the house nestled firmly in the woods outside of Arcadia Bay, one of the few that were constructed in these woodlands in the wake of the prosperity that Leonard International brought the town.

In her teenage years, Victoria would have said that her chief influence was Richard Avedon, whose fashion photography and portrait-work moved pieces within her that she didn't think could be moved.  The crispness of his black-and-white work capturing personality, where the reality of people like Marilyn Monroe, John Ford, and Audrey Hepburn broke from the façade.

But as she got older, the more she gravitated toward Ansel Adams.  There was something _timeless_ about his work.  Not in the superficial sense that usually accompanied the word, but in a _literal_ way.  His work in Yosemite could have been done at any time.  It could have been done centuries past, or centuries in the future.  Time and tide could ebb and flow, nations and empires could rise and fall, but these places would still stand untouched by the fleeting tourism of humanity itself.

The only time she had ever truly interrogated herself about this was on a vacation that she and her husband had taken two years ago.  Warren was asleep on the bed in their room at the Maui Hilton.  She awoke in the middle of the night, put on her silk bathrobe, and stood at the railing of the suite’s balcony, watching the Pacific roil in the moonlight.

Katie had handed in her second book, and the publishing house was in the early stages of planning the book tour, on which both Katie and Victoria were required to go.  The first book had made _millions_ and given both the demand and the publisher’s prospective supply, the second was set to make millions more.

And staring out at the ocean, she knew that her dream of being _the star,_ of being a photographer who was _seen_ as well as _saw_ herself was… over.  That was it.  Given the amount of money she was making as Katie’s agent, the rest of her life would, more likely than not, be fulfilled as the steward of other peoples’ dreams instead of her own.  Maybe that’s why she was moving toward Adams and away from Avedon.  The great _eternity_ of his unchanging landscapes was a definite place that knew no change and knew no time.  If she could disappear into one of those photos, she too would be eternal, she too would cease to age.  She could work, and work, and work, until the eye she had matched the eye that she _thought_ she had.

She did not resent Katie for this.  She put a video of Katie in an uncompromising position on the internet during their year at Blackwell, for which Victoria would never forgive herself, even though Katie had done so countless times over.  There were far worse fates in the world than being the guide to a better person, and Victoria was secure enough (at least in this one regard) to believe that this wasn’t the usual private self-effacement that she hid with public bluster.  Katie was, well, _Katie._ She had the moral high ground over most politicians and religious leaders.  Holding Katie’s success against her was petty and foolish.

Holding Max Caulfield’s success against _her_ was _also_ petty and foolish… but that didn’t stop Victoria from doing so anyway.

All it took was one bullet, and that little freckled whore’s boring-ass photos made her rich.  If Victoria had known that that was all it took, then she’d have leapt into the middle of a police shootout when she was in the eighth grade.

Max Caulfield took her mentor away when she sent Mark Jefferson to prison.  She knew Mark was awful, and prison was where he deserved to be, but still… Mark was _hers._ She also knew that because Max took that bullet, then the potential likelihood of Mark doing something horrible to Victoria herself vanished completely.  But that didn’t make it better.  That made it _worse._ Like her own ability to spot a dangerous, evil man was taken from her and used by someone else.

And then, Max Caulfield took Nathan away.  And again, she couldn’t strictly blame Max for this, but that just made Victoria blame her more, somehow.  That she was the catalyst for her best friend’s self-destruction galled Victoria in ways which the English language had been woefully inadequate to express. 

Max had even…

It was at this point that Victoria had to stop her walk in the woods to almost _physically_ halt that thought from completing itself.

In her darkest and least proud moments, Victoria had a habit of convincing herself that she had married Max Caulfield’s leftovers.  And it was usually at that point that she stopped herself to work her way out of her jealous, self-pitying hole.  Warren wasn’t perfect, but he deserved better than _that._

Her parents didn’t get it.  Even _Warren_ _’s_ parents had looks on their faces, as though they wanted to ask her _“Oh, honey, are you sure about this?”_

But Victoria needed only to look at Warren.  _Yes, I’m sure._

The only truly objectionable thing about her husband was his continued association with Max, and with God as Victoria’s witness, she _swore_ that little bitch liked rubbing salt into old-yet-still-open wounds.  Max _moved back_ to Arcadia Bay!  What kind of happy horseshit was _this?_

And it culminated with Max and Chloe’s parlor tricks this morning.  Victoria didn’t know how they pulled it off, but it _had_ to be a trick.  Chloe was a detective, so she, like, _noticed things_.  That could be a superpower if you did it right.

But Max’s comments regarding a nightmare about Mark killing her had rattled Victoria, to the point where she took a swing at Max.  Even though Chloe caught her wrist before she made contact (Victoria could have sworn Chloe had been on the other side of the room only a second before), she knew that she’d have to shovel down a plateful of shit and apologize to Max.  Truth be told, Victoria _had_ had nightmares about Mark murdering her occasionally these past six years, though none as graphic and as immediate as the one she’d had two days ago.

But truth be told, it was the nightmare Victoria had had _last night_ that bothered her.

In it, she was sitting in her dorm room at Blackwell, texting Max on her phone.  In this time, in this place, in this nightmare, she knew that she and Max were… _friends._ She was texting Max, rapidly, wondering why she wasn’t texting back like she usually did.  She could feel her cheeks swell, feel the tears cloud her eyes, trying to figure out what she’d done that had upset Max so.  Even in this haze of dream, Victoria had felt her self-worth shrivel to almost nothing.

_Ugh!_

Victoria shuddered.  That nightmare was the _last_ Goddamn time that she would devote even a single iota of her energy to giving a far-flung fuck what Max Caulfield thought of her.  And her bringing up Nathan _today_ of all…

Something stirred in the underbrush.

Victoria was not alone in the forest.

She readied her legs in case it was a wolf, while not knowing if there were even wolves in Oregon.  Still, though… _Wolves._

And, from a small canopy of leaves near the forest floor, it rose.

Victoria had seen orangutans before, in two separate zoos, but this… this wasn’t an orangutan.

The hair on this… _thing_ was a dusty brown, not orange.  Its cheekbones were prominent, like a person’s.  It’s eyes were a wise and wistful brown, as opposed to the yellow she’d seen.  And its nose was as though it had begun the slow metamorphosis from primate to human.

And it wasn’t _big_ enough to be an orangutan.  The thing in front of her was only five-and-a-half feet tall.  Folds of skin were hanging off of its frame as though it were starving to death.  Its legs were too long and its arms were too short and it was walking upright and…

_Ohhhhhh,_ Fuck…

This was a _Sasquatch!_

The Sasquatch viewed Victoria with the same level of wonder and skepticism that she felt on her own face.  It looked like it was going to come toward her, but seemed to rethink it.  Victoria wouldn’t have minded.  Victoria wasn’t scared.  She was too stunned to be scared.

The only thought on Victoria’s mind was one that had been self-conditioned to pop up whenever wonder, mystery, or terror had been placed before her.

_I have to get a shot of this…_

Victoria raised her camera to her face, only to see that the damned thing was dead.  She tore herself away from her reverie long enough to think that it served her right using a digital camera instead of a film piece.  She thought she’d changed the batteries in the Sony a week ago.

Which she had.  It was merely Victoria’s bad fortune to use a battery operated device during what Chloe Price would have called _“The Third Plague.”_

By the time Victoria looked back at the Sasquatch, it had already begin to trundle away, cracking branches and trampling leaves as it went.  And Victoria watched it until it disappeared from view in the Oregon wilderness.

Tears were streaming down her face.  Not from sadness.  Not from wonder.

She had merely forgotten to blink.

* * *

Chloe watched Victoria relay this story to Warren in their living room on campus.  Warren was sitting on the couch, Victoria was standing in front of him, and she and Max were off to the side.  Max’s hand wandered and found Chloe’s.  Their fingers laced together.

It did explain Victoria’s mode of dress, though.  Seeing her in jeans, hiking boots and a t-shirt was like seeing Elton John dressed as the Gorton’s fisherman.

Halfway through Victoria’s story, Warren got his phone out, and did not break eye-contact with his wife as he did so.

“So I came back to the house, drank a glass of wine, and then I came here,” Victoria said.

Warren only nodded, and said “There’s something I want you to look at.”

At which point he swiped a few times at his screen, tapped a few more times, and the showed Victoria what he brought up.

Chloe and Max strained to see what Victoria was seeing on Warren’s phone.  It looked like a lovingly-done illustration of something that looked like and orangutan, and yet _not_ an orangutan.

“That’s it,” Victoria said.  “Is that a Sasquatch?”

“That,” Warren said, “is a Gigantopithecus.”

“Sweetie, don’t demean me by making me ask what that is.”

“A Gigantopithecus,” Warren said, “is a kind of ape that went extinct about a hundred thousand years ago.”

Tobanga’s words echoed inside Chloe’s head.  _“I was on_ Earth _before_ humanity…”

Warren continued.  “They were only found in Asia, but there have been theories that they not only lived here, but a strain of them lived in isolation well into the present day, and that explains all of the Sasquatch and Bigfoot sightings since the seventies.”

“So they _do?”_ Victoria asked.

“I don’t think so,” Warren said.  “These types of apes eat fruit, which doesn't grow in Oregon in enough quantities to sustain a population, though it may have once, before shifts in climate.  Given that _… time-travel_ … is real, and likes to snatch people and things for nor rhyme or reason, I think that’s the likelier explanation.  Although I had no idea the phenomenon was _that_ pronounced.  I mean a few decades in either direction is one thing, but a hundred-thousand _years?_ ”

Quiet filled the room.

“Warren,” Chloe said.  “I know you’re a science teacher and all, but still… How do you _know_ all this shit?”

Warren looked a bit hurt.  “I can have _hobbies.”_

“So…” Victoria said.  “I didn’t see a Sasquatch?”

Warren’s face contorted, as though he were trying to stop himself from listing off the technicalities.

“No.”

“You’re saying… I saw… a _caveman?”_

Again with the contortions.  “Yes.”

“Warren,” Victoria said.  “That doesn’t make me feel better in the _slightest.”_

Warren’s face fell.  Chloe knew what was coming.

“What?” Victoria asked.  “What is it?”

Warren picked up the envelope that contained Nathan’s letter from the past.

“Victoria… There’s no good time, or good way, to give you this, so…”

Warren held the letter out to her.  She looked at Warren and the letter with both trepidation and reproach before she took it, liberated the letter from its envelope, and began to read.

It took her five minutes to read, during which Chloe began a near-obsessive scan of Victoria’s face. She betrayed no emotion until she finished.

Victoria stood in silence, letter at her side. Taking deep breath after deep breath.

“Today is… _was…_ his birthday,” Victoria said.  “He was going to turn twenty-four today.  It turns out he _did_ turn twenty-four, just… just not today.  I couldn’t get him anything, because the hospital wouldn’t let him _have_ anything, but… in a world that made sense, I’d have gone to see him today.”

Victoria nodded to herself.  Chloe could sense the fragility coming off of her in waves.  Victoria turned her back on all of them, trying to chisel herself into someone who had composure.  Warren stood up from the couch and reached out to her…

…and Victoria reared on him, quickly and violently.  Her eyes were wide murals of anger, glassy with tears that wouldn’t fall from sheer force of will.

_“Don’t!_ Okay?  Just… just fucking _don’t!_ You hated Nathan, so don’t give me any _‘I’m sorry’_ bullshit when you’re _clearly_ not!”

Warren didn’t jump.  Didn’t blink.  The mask of pure concern that was on his face didn’t crumble.

“I love _you,”_ Warren said.  “I know how much he meant to you, and I’m sorry you have to go through this.  I’m sorry you had to learn this way.  I know you feel like you have to suffer alone.  You always do, and that’s always fine.  But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.  I’ll be here for you… if you’ll have me.”

That did it.

Victoria’s face cratered.  Her cheeks went red instantly, and the tears fell.  She stumbled toward Warren with her head down, and he kissed Victoria on the forehead before he wrapped his wife in an embrace.  His left arm went around her waist and his right hand cradled the back of her head as Victoria cried into his collarbone.

Chloe put her arm around Max’s shoulders.  She didn’t know why, and it was best not to ask questions.

The crying jag lasted about five minutes, before Victoria pulled away from Warren, wiping the tears from her cheeks.  Then she rolled her eyes.

“Oh, _God,”_ Victoria said.  “I got snot on your shirt.”

Warren looked down at himself.  “Well, you know more about accessorizing than I do.  I thought you did it on purpose.  Help me dress better.”

Victoria smiled, and then willed herself not to.  She rubbed at her eyes and straightened herself up.

“So… we’re going to get that file Nathan buried, right?”

They both looked at Chloe and Max.

“That’s the plan,” Chloe said.

“Wait,” Max said.  “Am I the only one stuck on the fact that there’s a prehistoric creature out there just running wild in the Oregon woods?”

“The Sasquatch is someone else’s problem,” Victoria said.  “And _fuck_ this town for being weird enough to make me say something like that out loud.” 

* * *

 

It was decided that they would be taking Warren’s red Ford Explorer out to the rest area outside of town to dig up whatever Nathan buried.  They knew he said _“accordion file”_ in his letter, but they needed shovels and flashlights, and therefore needed room.  And they knew Chloe would prohibit anything dirty getting into The Taxi without even asking her.

There was one small problem.

“We need shovels,” Max said.  “I think Samuel’s here.  Let’s go ask him.”

Chloe pinched the bridge of her nose, listening to the wind rustle the trees, and Warren explaining the finer points of Chloe and Max’s six year odyssey to Victoria.

“Can we _not?”_ Chloe asked.  “He gives me the creeps.”

“He gives _everyone_ the creeps,” Max said.  “But he also has shovels.  I hope he’s around.  I don’t want to go to Wal-Mart and buy shovels.  _That_ place gives me the creeps.”

Samuel was not there, but two shovels were placed outside of his door.  The one on the left bore a yellow Post-It Note, which read:

_Here are the tools you need.  Happy hunting, Detective.  
_ _-S._

Max’s eyes were the definition of astonishment.  “How did he _know?”_

Chloe sighed and picked up one of the shovels.  “How about we solve the bigger science-fiction mysteries before we get to work on the smaller ones.  Can we do that?  _Please?”_

* * *

The ride to the rest stop rest area near Exit 21 was twenty minutes of silence.  The first thing Victoria said as soon as she got out of the passenger-side door was:

“Chloe and I will go dig it up.  You two guard the truck.”

Max seemed more taken aback about this than Chloe was.  Warren was completely stone-faced, as though he knew this was coming.

“The truck… needs… _guarding?”_ Max asked.

Victoria sighed with derision.  “I said it, Max, so it must be true.  I’m like the Pope that way.”

Chloe got one shovel out of the back of the Explorer.  Victoria got the other.  They went back around the truck to stand across from their respective significant others.

“Don’t take too long,” Warren said.

“Oh, no,” Victoria said.  “I was planning on taking my _time_ in the creepy woods near the rest area where homeless guys are probably blowing each other.”

It is a stereotype that people who have been married for years rarely kiss each other, and only do so chastely and primly after a certain point.  Victoria and Warren apparently had not heard of this, as they were making their kiss last.  Chloe was actually impressed.

“Have fun,” Warren said as Victoria started to walk away.

Chloe looked at Max, who stood near the rear door of the Explorer in a way that held expectation.  _If_ _Victoria_ _gets a kiss, I get one, too._

She had made it a point to stay out of the half-a-decade-long game of one-upsmanship that Max Caulfield had going with Victoria Chase… but kissing Max was its own reward, so she’d let it slide just this once.

Chloe and Victoria had made it into the woods, flashlights at the ready, before Chloe decided to break the silence.

“You do know I’m a detective, right?” Chloe asked.

“I know that detective licenses come as prizes in boxes of Lucky Charms, and you must have found one,” Victoria said.  “Good for you.”

Chloe nodded, letting that one roll off her back.  “It’s just that… You just left your husband alone with The Girl That Got Away.”

Victoria stopped and turned to look at Chloe.  Her eyebrows were down, making the eyes themselves look like little, pitiless trapezoids.

“Are you saying that my husband is not to be trusted around your girlfriend?”

“Nope,” Chloe said.  “Warren seems like a sturdy dude, fit for anyone who likes sturdy dudes, as you apparently do.  But I _am_ saying that leaving Warren around someone you hate for very numerous and very specific reasons must stick in your craw, and I’m just trying to conjure why you did it.”

Victoria looked around.  “Nathan’s letter said a patch of loose earth, right?”

“Yeah.”

“There it is.”

Chloe shined the flashlight at where Victoria was pointing.  The patch of soil wasn’t very big, and what was buried there didn’t seem to be buried very deep, but Chloe was glad they brought the shovels anyway.  In spite of Victoria’s Nature Girl cosplay, Chloe figured she’d pitch an almighty fit if she had to go digging through the dirt with her bare hands.

They both walked to the patch of earth, but before they did anything, Victoria dug the head of her shovel into the dirt and leaned on it.

“I cried on my husband’s shoulder,” Victoria said.  “I fell into every mushy, shithead fantasy that men have about women, and it’s… just… _gross._ I love Warren.  He’s my husband.  But… there are some parts of me that… that other people shouldn’t see.  I need to be my best, and me bawling into his shirt is not that.  Ideally, I’d need some time and some distance before I let him see me again, okay?  Warren loves me because I’m strong.”

Knowing what she knew about Warren, even if it wasn’t a lot… Chloe didn’t think that squared away entirely.

“Maybe it’s just me,” Chloe said, “but I think Warren loves you because you’re _you.”_

Victoria looked at Chloe.  She was so caught by surprise that she had to mask her shock at the statement with rolled eyes and a scowl… but some _fear_ was there.

_She’s not scared because she thinks it’s false,_ Chloe thought.  _She’s scared because she thinks it might be_ true.

But it was just a momentary crack in Victoria’s façade, and the moment passed.

“Oh, what the fuck do _you_ know?” Victoria asked.  “Help me dig.”

* * *

True to his word, Nathan Prescott buried an accordion filein the woods outside of the rest area near Exit 21.  It was wrapped in plastic and filled to the brim with papers.

Chloe had insisted that she got to look at the file before any law enforcement officials.  She may have cleaned the dirt out of the ABPD, but on the whole, she didn’t trust them.  The other three consented.

Victoria had taken it upon herself to carry the file under the arm that wasn’t busy with her shovel.  As they approached the Explorer, Chloe could hear the last snippet of Max and Warren’s quiet conversation.

“So the top _wasn’t_ Cobb’s totem?” Warren asked.

“The top was his _wife’s_ totem,” Max said.  “No one knows what Cobb’s totem is because you’re not supposed to tell anyone.  Why would Nolan tell the audience?”

They saw Chloe and Victoria coming and stood up straight.  They loaded the shovels, the flashlights, and the file into the back of the Explorer.

“You wanna go in and wash your hands?” Chloe asked.

_“Hell_ no,” Victoria said.

And that was that.

The four wordlessly got into the truck (Victoria insisted upon driving) and drove away in silence.

A silence which was broken as soon as they got within the Arcadia Bay city limits.

“I hate _Attack on Titan,”_ Victoria said.

The announcement was sudden and random, so much so that Max jumped from her position in the backseat next to Chloe.

“The world I was in when I went to bed last night isn’t very similar to the one I woke up in this morning,” Victoria said.  “My best friend died forty years before he was born, birds are falling from the sky, and there are time-traveling cavemen.  I want to care about stupid bullshit again, and today… today doesn’t look good for that.  I’ve got to cling to something trivial and dumb to preserve my sanity, and that’s what I’m grabbing onto.  I’d say _Attack on Titan_ sucks ass, but the act of sucking ass might make someone happy.  Which is more than I can say for _Attack on Titan.”_

_“Attack on Titan_ is _incredible,”_ Max said.  “You’re a monster.  Warren, back me up.”

“Nuh-uh,” Warren said from the front passenger seat.  “You’re on your own.”

“It’s like that _Hikaru No-Go_ shit,” Victoria said, “where they try to make that game Russell Crowe played in _A Beautiful Mind_ look all hardcore and awesome, and it’s completely ridiculous.  It’s just high-looking giants eating people, and a bunch of unlikable kids I don’t give a shit about with bungee equipment strapped to their thighs.  What the f—“

So intense was this discussion of the relative merits of an anime that no one in the Explorer noticed the black Cadillac Escalade coming up behind them, _way_ over the limit.  It hit the right rear of the Explorer hard enough to veer it to the side, causing it to roll over twice on the road.

* * *

Chloe came to.

Everyone was wearing their seatbelts, which gave everyone the appearance of marionettes in the upside down vehicle, their arms raised to the roof of the truck.

The scene was lit by the headlights of a vehicle behind them.  Over the humming engines of both trucks, Chloe could hear a _drip-drip-drip_ from the front.  She needed only to look in the rearview mirror to see that Warren was bleeding from a cut in his forehead.  It was getting into his hair and was dripping onto the upholstered roof.

Chloe looked to her right to see Max, eyes closed, arms raised, showing no signs of external damage.  Chloe reached for Max’s throat and found a pulse, thank God.

Chloe unbuckled her seatbelt, and gravity dropped her on the back of her skull.

_“Ow, fuck…”_

She opened her door and began a slow crawl to the pavement, her hands reaching out, dragging her further into the road.

A human-shaped shadow loomed, and a sneaker came down on Chloe’s left hand.  Chloe grunted in pain before she looked up.

It was a young woman wearing jeans and a black hoodie.  One side of her face was a mass of burns and cuts.

The girl who called herself Lorraine Foster was on the phone.

“Yeah, I have them,” Lorraine said.  “Four… Caulfield, Price, the science teacher, and his wife… What do you want me to do with them?... Are you sure that’s… Yes… Yes, I understand.”

Lorraine hung up he phone and stuffed into the pocket of her hoodie before looking down at Chloe.

“If it were up to me, I’d have killed you already.  But someone wants to talk to you.”

Chloe tried to some up with something to say, but it felt like there were more cobwebs in her brains than there were brains.

Lorraine sneered.  “Sweet dreams, Chloe.”

She kicked Chloe in the temple, and the world faded away again.


	18. Queen of Strong Style

**Chapter 18: Queen of Strong Style**

“Warren?”

Nothing.

 _“_ _Warren_ _…?”_

Chloe’s eyes opened.  Her vision was a dimly-lit panorama of Max’s scared face.

Max covered Chloe’s mouth with her hand.

 _“Don’t say anything,”_ Max whispered.

From what Chloe could immediately tell, she and Max were in the bed of the Escalade, on their sides.  As she took Max’s hands in her own, Chloe deduced that Warren and Victoria were in the backseat proper.

 _“_ _Warren_ _…”_ Victoria said again.

Warren was apparently the last person to come to after the Explorer crashed.  _“Huh… wha…”_

Panic was quietly slipping into Victoria’s voice.  “Oh my God, Sweetie, you’re _blee—“_

“Shut the fuck up back there.”

The girl who called herself Lorraine Foster, in the driver’s seat, had finally made her presence and her power felt.  She didn’t even have to raise her voice to do it.  Victoria silenced herself instantly.

Another five minutes on the road, with Chloe and Max in the bed of the Escalade, both too scared to look up to see where they were.

Finally, mercifully, the Escalade came to a stop.  The jingle of keys, and the engine died.

“All eyes up here,” Lorraine said.

Chloe and Max arose, looking over the shoulders of Warren and Victoria in the back seat. 

Lorraine raised a revolver for all of them to see.

“Now that you see this, I want you to look at the person next to you.”

Max and Chloe looked at each other, as did Victoria and Warren.

“I have no doubt the four of you are in very loving relationships,” Lorraine said.  “Which is why if any of you think of running when you get out of this vehicle, I will shoot you in the face—not in the _head,_ in the _face_ —in front of the person you are looking at right now.  The last thing you will hear before I send you to Hell will be the person you are looking at screaming in vain for me to spare you.  Now you know what the stakes are.”

A very stunned, very scared silence.  Lorraine lowered the weapon.

“None of you move until I tell you to.  You know the penalty.”

Lorraine got out of the car, but before she did, Chloe saw that she got Nathan’s accordion file out of the front seat.  The plastic was off… which meant that Lorraine had gone through it.

_Fuck…_

Lorraine went around the Escalade, and opened the rear doors as well as the hatch, which exposed Chloe and Max to the late summer evening.  Lorraine stood back, file under arm, gun drawn.

“Alright,” Lorraine said.  "Everyone out and to the back, in front of me.  Close the doors behind you.”

Everyone did as she said, with Warren and Victoria shutting their doors, and Chloe closing the hatch for Max.  They stood in a row in front of Lorraine.

Chloe remembered this place well: Pan Estates.  The last time she’d been here was the previous November, where she’d revealed the evidence that made The Bull’s guys turn on him to the tune of two bullets to the head, before she went to Denise Leonard’s house and got her arrested for murder and kidnapping, among other things.  The night Chloe Elizabeth Price went from underworld courier to full-blown hero.

Chloe didn’t think that history was going to repeat itself.

“Now,” Lorraine said, “while you’re taking in the loveliness of your last night alive, that lightness you feel in your pockets would be your lack of phones.  I ditched them, in case you hadn’t figured it out by now.  No one, and nothing, is going to save you.”

 _You don’t tell people you’re going to kill them and expect them to do what you say,_ Chloe thought.  _Otherwise they’ll get unruly… Like me._

Lorraine pointed her gun to the Pan Estates building on the far left of the property.

“That’s the building you’re going to,” Lorraine said.  “You’re going, single file, ahead of me, where you will stop at the door wand wait for me to open it.  The punishment for disobedience will be very loud and very made of lead.  Now march.”

Chloe smirked.  “After you, Harvey Dent.”

Chloe’s first instinct was regret at mouthing off to a very dangerous person.  But that regret was dammed by a massive wall of _Fuck That._ Chloe was going to die on Saturday anyway, and what was another thirty-six hours between her and the universe?  She’d try to play it smart for the sake of the other three people who were in the shit with her (there were too many variables at play to use her powers without a plan), but _“smart”_ didn’t automatically equate to _“polite.”_

But the effect of her comment was _immediate._ Max’s jaw dropped, and if Victoria were wearing pearls, she’d have been clutching at them for dear life.  Only Warren’s expression didn’t change, but Chloe wasn’t sure Warren knew where he was.

The expression on Lorraine’s face didn’t change either.  Not when she digested Chloe’s comment for a moment, not when she walked up to Chloe, and not when she drove her knee into Chloe’s gut.

Chloe dropped like a sack of potatoes, and struggled to breathe.

_“Chloe!”_

There was a thickness in Max’s voice.  She tried to bend down and help Chloe, but Lorraine flashed the gun, which kept Max upright.

Lorraine looked down at Chloe.  “You’ll watch your tongue, or I’ll rip it out of your head and staple it to your girlfriend’s forehead.  I don’t need to ask you if you understand.”

Through the pain, through the coughing fit, two things were foremost on Chloe’s mind.

The first was that Lorraine was _not_ a professional.  Chloe knew through simple common sense that in a situation like that, someone who knew what they were doing would have reserved that knee for _Max’s_ gut instead of hers.  But no.  Lorraine lashed out at the things she didn’t like.  She was dangerous… and predictable.

The second thing was that Lorraine seemed to rattle easily.

_Good to know._

“Get on your feet,” Lorraine said.

Chloe slowly did so.

The five of them marched, as Lorraine commanded, in a single file line to the door of the far left building of Pan Estates, with Lorraine and her revolver taking up the rear.  It was one of the buildings that was full of luxury suites, as opposed to the main building where The Bull had perished the previous autumn.  Lorraine stepped in front of them after they stopped, making sure both her eyes and her gun never left her four hostages.  She reached behind her and opened one of the massive wooden doors to the lobby of the building.

“Move,” Lorraine said.

And they did.

The lobby of this building of suites was made for opulence, but as Pan Estates had never opened, no one had taken it upon themselves to decorate its interior.  What Chloe saw was a great expansive place where things _should_ have gone: sofas, desks, paintings, vases, all conspicuous by their absence.  A grandiose, white-painted shrine to nothing, a mausoleum to no one, save perhaps she and the three she was held prisoner alongside, before the night was through.

Lorraine went ahead of them again to a side door that led to stairs, as there was no power to operate an elevator.  Where a brick wall would be in a normal stairwell, there were long windows that granted a view of the forest, and the moon rising above it, as though the building _wanted_ its inhabitants to know where they were at all times, oppressively reminding them of the nature beyond its walls.

She bade her prisoners stop at the door to the fourth floor, and she went ahead of them again to lead her charges into the hallway.

In every electrical outlet along this hallway was a cheap, store-bought night-light that provided creepy, bluish-white illumination, as though this were the commonplace entryway to the deepest and coldest ring of Hell.

The five walked to the far end of the hall, to the biggest room on the floor.  So important was this room that there was no number on the door.  Its largesse spoke for itself.

In contrast to the lobby and the hallway, this room _was_ decorated, _was_ furnished, and lit only by a fire in the fireplace.  Judging from the man lounging in a plush chair at fireside, legs crossed and nine-millimeter pistol at the ready, Chloe wondered what it was that Lorraine did with her days besides trying to kill Max.  Did she have to go out and get all this shit on her own?  Vacuum?  Dust?

Victoria was the one who connected the dots first.

“Mister _Prescott?”_

“Good evening, Victoria,” Sean Prescott said.  He smiled in a way that was more threatening than the glares from some of the criminals Chloe had met.

Chloe gathered that Sean Prescott had either planned this situation out for maximum dramatic effect, or he had no self-awareness whatsoever.  All he needed was a shaved head and a Persian cat.  _Welcome to my lair, Mister Bond._

The only occasions upon which Chloe had been in the same room with Sean Prescott had been at Nathan’s competency hearings to determine whether or not he was fit to stand trial.  To her recollection, the two had never locked eyes, but Chloe had an uneasy feeling, every time she set foot in that courtroom, that Sean Prescott was looking at her _without_ looking at her.  Casting judgment and hate without deigning to give her the respect of a glance.

“Howdy, Sean,” Chloe said.

“Chloe.”

“Nice gun.”

“Thanks.”

“That a pearl handle?”

Sean smiled.  _“Ivory.”_

“Oh,” Chloe said.  “Good.  I was just thinking the other day about how Sean Prescott needed to be _that_ much more unlikable.”

Chloe heard the accordion file drop to the floor, and Lorraine was immediately in her face, eyes wide, breath going in and out of flared nostrils in little bullish huffs.

“How does it feel knowing this is your last night on Earth?” Lorraine asked.

Chloe smirked.  “How does it feel knowing that when I get home tonight, I’m going down on the girl who did that to your face?”

Lorraine was quick.  Chloe didn’t see her fist come up, colliding with her jaw with the force of a bullet. 

She dropped to one knee from the force of the punch, shook off some of the pain, and looked at Sean.

“I think you left the window open,” Chloe said.  “I just felt a draft.”

Lorraine reared back and kicked Chloe in the side of the head, dropping her the rest of the way to the floor.  Her left ear was ringing now.

She could hear Max trying not to cry.  “Chloe, for God’s sake, _just stop talking!”_

“They still tell stories about you,” Lorraine said.  “The teenage punk hellraiser who grew up to run errands for drug dealers.  Now look at you.  You own your own business, you’re a pillar of the community… You’re just a sweet old lady, aren’t you?”

Biting down felt weird after the punch, but Chloe could still talk.  “Don’t laugh,” she said.  “That just makes you the little bitch I’m about to kick off my lawn.”

Lorraine raised her foot to stomp on Chloe’s face, but help came form the unlikeliest of sources.

“Rose,” Sean said.  “Enough.”

Lorraine put her foot down.

Apparently Lorraine’s real name was Rose.

Rose picked the accordion file up from where she'd dropped it and walked it over to Sean.

“She had this on her,” Rose said.

“Thank you,” said Sean, and Chloe could see Rose sigh in contentment before coming back to her station behind the four hostages.

Sean thumbed through the contents of the file, his brow rising in surprise as he did so.  He put the file next to the chair in which he sat.

“Did you get a chance to look at that?” Sean asked.

Chloe had gotten to her feet.  “No.”

“Pity,” Sean said.  “The contents are quite interesting.  Now… I have a quarrel with your girlfriend.  And Rose here, _definitely_ has a quarrel with your girlfriend.  But you’re the one with the mouth, and that makes you the de-facto ringleader, so it is you to whom I shall speak.  But it’s not as though you’re _strictly_ innocent.”

“Buddy,” Chloe said.  “I didn’t do _shit_ to you.”

“Really?” Sean asked.  “You didn’t elect to blackmail my son over his indiscretions?”

A memory, buried deep, roared to the surface.  Chloe, groggy after being dosed.  Foot meeting flesh.  A lamp shattering.  A hazy escape.  Chloe didn’t think she could get more pissed off, but Sean Prescott was in the miracle business as well as land development.

 _“Indiscretions?”_ Chloe asked.  “My, the euphemisms for sexual assault just get more flowery every year, don’t they?”

“Play the victim all you want,” Sean said, “but you extorted a mentally ill boy for short-term gain.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Chloe asked.  “Nathan’s only mentally ill when it can get you sympathy points.  Every other time he’s an embarrassment or a failure.  Isn’t that right?”

Sean rolled his eyes and sighed.  “Do you watch a lot of movies, Chloe?”

“I’ve seen my share.”

“So have I,” Sean said.  “I’ve spent a great number of years on the wrong side of a screen, telling people in my position to just  _shoot_ people in your position, instead of talking and _talking_ and _taaaaalking._ But now that I’m here, and now that you’re there, I’ve finally figured it out.  If it were a simple business transaction, then yeah, I’d shoot you.  But this is personal.  I need to tell you my story before you die.”

Sean Prescott placed the gun in his lap and steepled his fingers.

“My entire life,” Sean said, “I have been instilled by my father with a great purpose, like his father before him.  Words like _‘storm’_ and _‘Traveler’_ have held extra meaning for me since before I could remember.  If the cup passed to me, I would lead people to a new Arcadia Bay after nature reclaimed it with wind and rain, and if it passed to my son… Generations of Prescotts have passed The Myth of the Traveler down through the years, but I was the first to actually chart it, actually _predict_ when it was going to come.”

Something clicked within Chloe.  “You tracked the Black Knight Satellite.”

Sean looked impressed, and considering that Sean had likely never given his own son the look he was giving her now, it just made her stomach turn.

“Very _good!”_ Sean said.  “You _are_ a detective!  The first pass was in 2013, and I tried to impress upon Nathan how important that week in October was, but Nathan being Nathan, he failed, and for reasons I didn’t know at the time, the storm didn’t come.  I thought I was wrong.  That feeling only doubled last November during the Satellite’s next pass, when nothing happened… but then I got a call from an attorney.  It seemed someone in a federal prison wished to speak to me.”

Something clicked within Chloe again, but Max beat her to it.

“Denise Leonard,” Max said.

 _“My,”_ said Sean.  “Aren’t the two of you just sharp as tacks?  I have to tell you, Chloe, you brought shame to her family name and put her in prison, and Denise _still_ wants to get into those pants of yours.  I can’t see it myself, but I can’t account for her taste.  Turns out _you_ were The Traveler in 2013, Max.  And the Jennifer Healy girl was The Traveler in 2018.  I was right the whole time.  Now, I had to work fast.  It’s a long plan, and one I won’t bore you with, but in essence, after the storm hits, no one will be able to rebuild.”

“Is that why you had your goon here burn the Two Whales down?” Chloe asked.

Sean smiled.  “Your mother refused to cooperate, but something had to be done.  As I understand it, insurance will cover everything, but she’s not going to want to rebuild in what’s going to become the middle of nowhere, so she’s going to make out like a bandit.  Considering her daughter’s going to die in a few minutes, you really should be thanking me.”

Chloe’s face went cold.

“Funny you should mention Rose,” Sean said.  “I had to run around like a chicken with my head cut off to get fake phone numbers set up, forge documents.  It was just a _chore_ to get her into Blackwell.”

“To take me out?” Max asked.

“You _are_ the cause of all this,” Sean said.  “It was the simplest thing in the world to just hide and let Chloe die.  A valuable lesson from the universe about sacrifice, just gone, and my son had to suffer for your nosiness.”

“That’s what _you_ would have done?” Max asked.  “I’m not _you._ I’m not a _monster._ I may not be sorry for you, but I _am_ sorry for your son.  And I don’t care who had that gun on Chloe, she wasn’t dying alone on a bathroom floor.”

Max and Chloe exchanged glances, before they turned their eyes back to Sean.  If that was the last time they looked at each other…

“So what was the plan?” Chloe asked.  “Kill us, pave paradise, put up a parking lot?  You still want to open Pan Estates for all your rich buddies?  So _what_ if the regular folks get blown away and die, right?”

Sean fixed Chloe with a gaze and blinked slowly.  “Do you know what I’m building in Arcadia Bay after the storm comes?”

Sean leaned forward.

_“Nothing.”_

The word settled on the room like a sheet of frost.

“The storm wipes everything out, I’ll by the land cheap, and _nothing_ will be put in its place.  For over a century, my family provided for this town, gave its people jobs, put food on thousands of tables.  We funded schools, helped businesses grow, and because of you, because of your girlfriend, because of Kate Marsh, because of Rachel Amber, this town _abandoned_ me.  By the end of the week, Arcadia Bay will be a graveyard.  I won’t even clear the rubble away.  The wreckage will stick up from the earth as long as I am alive.  A warning to _anyone_ who _dares_ for get me, or my name.”

Sean sat back again.  “So,” he said.  “You have this file, so only one question remains to be asked.”

Sean pointed the gun at Chloe.  She jumped involuntarily.

“Where is my son?”

For the briefest of moments, Chloe thought she would answer that question in full… but she didn’t think Sean deserved it.

“Nathan’s dead,” Chloe said.

Sean blinked a couple of times, and lowered the gun.  He sat back, deflated.

“The son-to-son line of the Prescott family went all the way back to the eighteen-fifties, did you know that?  And now it’s gone.  I’m the last… I guess it’s just one of those ways that life is unfair.”

Neither Chloe nor Max took that well, but Victoria took it the worst.

“He was your _son,”_ Victoria said.  “He was going to turn twenty-four years old today.  He’s _dead…_ and you’re making this about _you?”_

The look Sean gave Victoria was a sour one, native to those whose integument of self-delusion would not brook anyone else’s feelings in particular, or fact-based logic in general.  The look Victoria returned was one of astonished rage.

“What’s the plan?” Chloe asked.  _“How_ did you make sure the town was going to die after the storm hit?”

Sean clucked his tongue.  “See, remember what I said at the beginning?  That’s _business._ I’m not telling you my business.  And it’s my turn, anyway.”

Sean grabbed the gun from his lap and stood up.

“From what Rose tells me, she tried to kill Max on Monday night.  Tried to pop her through your living room window.  Only… you tackled Max, saving her life.  Almost as though you _knew_ she was going to get shot.”

Sean pointed the gun at Chloe.

“Well… I guess that makes you The Traveler.”

Sean opened fire.

_BANG!_

**_Booommm…_ **

The counter-clockwise spiral, the shimmer, the headache, and the stoppage of time happened instantaneously.  _Ohhhh, right, this thing kicks in automatically if I’m about to die._

Just two feet away from her, suspended in mid-air, was the bullet that Sean had just fired at Chloe.  There were even ripples around it as it was tearing through the air at this moment of time, breaking the sound barrier.  The entire room was additionally lit by the muzzle-flash from Sean’s gun, still an iridescent bloom around the barrel.  The look of horror was frozen on Max’s face, as was the look of dim incomprehension on Warren’s (who looked like he’d been glazed a rusty red by the cut on his head from the crash), and the look of grim anticipation on Victoria’s.

Chloe reached out and took the bullet into the palm of her hand, and…

 _Jesus, this thing is fucking_ hot!

Time involuntarily resumed its forward momentum.  The report from the gun deafened the room, making Max, Warren, and Victoria jump.  Chloe dropped the bullet to the carpet and shook her hand before blowing on it.

Sean started laughing.

 _“That’s incredible!”_ Sean said, before clenching his eyes shut and blindly leveling the gun in front of him.

_“Encore, Chloe, encore!”_

Sean fired again.  The report filled the room with thunder.

Warren dropped instantly.

And the most sickening part was, in Chloe’s mind, that aside from the gunshot and the panicked yelp from Victoria, who was now crouching down next to her fallen husband, no one made a sound.  Not even Warren, who now had a bloom of blood spreading across his stomach.

He seemed more numb than terrified when he finally spoke.

“My legs… I can’t feel my legs…”

So entrenched was Chloe in the gravity of the situation, that she didn’t move.  Victoria, on the other hand, provided a cool head by being the exact opposite.

_“CHLOE!  FUCKING REWIND IT!”_

Chloe held out her hand.

**_Booommm…_ **

Chloe did her best to control it.  Victoria verrry sloooowly rose form her husband’s side.  Warren verrry slooowly got back to his feet.  The bullet verrry slooowly left his body.

It was two feet away from the impact point, now, and Chloe reached out with her free hand and gripped it between her thumb and forefinger.

Chloe let go of time while still holding on to the bullet.  The loud blast from the gun was _not_ helping her headache in any way.

She flung the bullet into the fireplace, shook her throbbing fingers cool, and rounded on Sean.

“I have power over time and space, you _fuck!_ You can’t do a damn thing to me.”

Sean cocked his head.  “Chloe… I’m not the one you need to be worried about right now.”

Chloe felt a pin-prick in her neck.

She whirled around and saw Rose, standing behind her, syringe in hand.

Chloe’s vision went blurry.

“Sufentanil,” Sean said.  “Fun fact, the same muscle relaxant Denise used to subdue Jennifer Healy is the exact same one that Mark Jefferson used in his little fuck dungeon.  Funny how life works.”

Chloe held out her hand and tried to rewind time.

Nothing happened.

"Face it, Chloe," Sean said.  "You can't beat me."

The shroud around her vision closed.  Chloe was unconscious before she hit the ground.

* * *

Chloe fell in slow-motion.  When she hit the carpet, Max’s instinct was to kneel on the floor.  To drag her closer.  To cover Chloe with her own body.  To protect her.

But Max knew that the four of them were fucked.  The last barrier between them and certain doom was unconscious on the floor in front of her.

Rose put the syringe in the pocket of her hoodie, and secured her gun near the small of her back, in the waist-band of her jeans.  Sean turned from Chloe’s body to Victoria and Warren… which Victoria took as a threat.

She got right in Sean’s face.  Max saw that everything below Victoria’s neck was shaking in terror, but her face was stern and her voice more so when she said…

“If you go near my husband, I will rip off your sack and feed it to you.”

Sean regarded Victoria quizically.  “You know what, Victoria?... I believe you.”

He pistol-whipped Victoria, the slide of the gun colliding with her cheekbone.  It staggered her on the spot, and she grunted in pain.

This seemed to be the thing to be the thing that brought Warren back to the land of the living.

_“You motherf—“_

Warren had begun to advance on Sean, but Sean had already grabbed the dazed Victoria and flung her roughly into her husband.  They both fell to the floor.

Sean’s eyes surveyed Max.

“Now, Max… I believe I’m not the only one who needs to talk to you."

Rose crouched down in front of the scared Max and the unconscious Chloe.  Her eyes were two green pools in the midst of pale skin on one side of her face, and scar tissue on the other.

While they stared at each other, Max’s hand found Chloe’s.  She dug her thumb, sharply and repeatedly, into Chloe’s palm as subtly as she could, without arousing anyone’s suspicions.  Max had been dosed with this very same drug that had just taken out Chloe, and it had knocked her out for hours… But no one had actually tried to wake her up.

“My name is Rose Fichtner,” Rose said.  “And I need to tell you my story.”

Rose sighed before she continued.

“My mother died when I was two years old.  My dad raised me on his own.  Didn’t even have a girlfriend during all the time I remember him.  He was a lawyer, you see.  He worked for Mister Prescott.  For Sean.  He did very well for me.  I didn’t want for anything.”

A smile came to Rose’s face, and Max was reminded of something that she’d found all too easy to forget: That whatever else Lorraine… or Rose… was, she was still an eighteen-year-old girl.

But that smile faded.

“One day, when I was twelve, Daddy drove me to school, I kissed him on the cheek, I went to class… and I remember… it was during lunch.  The principal came to the table I was sitting at, and he asked me if I could come to his office.”

Rose brushed away a tear before it could form in her eye.  The thought crossed Max’s mind that Rose hadn’t told anyone this story before.

“He told me,” Rose said, “that Daddy had been in a car crash.  Someone at the hospital told me that it wasn’t the crash that killed him, but he’d had a heart attack in the driver’s seat.  He’d been overworked, and he’d been coming to Pan Estates to help Sean with Nathan’s court case.”

Rose smiled bitterly, showing all of her teeth.  “So because you got to live, Daddy had to die.”

The smile went away, and the hairs on the back of Max’s neck stood on end.

“I am the only child of two only children” Rose said.  “All of my grandparents had died before I was born.  Daddy was an optimist, all things considered, and never had a will drafted.  So all that money went to… whoever gets rich people’s money after they die.  And because I had nowhere to go, I went into foster care.  With a whole bunch of other kids.  Do you know what foster kids like to do, Max?  That’s not a rhetorical question, you can speak.”

“N-No,” Max said, still digging her thumb into Chloe’s palm, trying to bring her to.

“They like to beat the shit out of little rich girls like me.  Do you know what foster parents hate more than _anything?”_

Max shook her head.

“When little rich girls start fighting _back._ The story was the same at every home I went to: I get welcomed with open arms, one of the other kids tries to test me, I test them back.  I’ve knocked out a few teeth.  Broke a few noses.  I even took some little shit’s _eye_.  It got so bad that they actually sent me to Haverford.  Where Nathan was.  I remember sitting in the waiting room while my foster father and a cop were signing paperwork, and a television was on.  I look up, and do you know what I saw?

“No,” Max said.

“I saw _you._ On _C-Span_ during one of those book things they do, and you were at a table with a bunch of other photographers talking about this book of Pacific Northwest photos.  My father died.  I got used as a punching bag by a bunch of mouth-breathing foster kids, and I was about to be stuck in a mental asylum… and _you_ were on _TV…_ Good for you.” 

Rose tried to drill holes into Max using only her eyes for a moment before continuing.

“See, I was sixteen, gonna age out of the system in a couple of years… and then I met Sean.”

Rose actually looked away for a second to lock eyes with Sean, before turning her attention back to Max.

“He remembered my father, and all the work he did.  Even remembered meeting _me_ when I was really young.  He… _talked_ to me instead of _at_ me, which is something no one had done since Daddy died.  He helped me put a name on my problems.”

“Max Caulfield,” Sean said.  Rose nodded in agreement.

“I told him I wanted to kill you.  Why should you rise so high only for me to fall so far?  And Sean pulled a few strings, got me out of Haverford… and we set to work.”

“I was originally going to send her to Seattle after you,” Sean said.  “But I heard through the grapevine that you were coming back to Arcadia Bay to become a schoolteacher.  You should have seen her face light up.  You were coming to _her.”_

Max looked back at Rose, whose face was the opposite of lit up.  She’d seen hyenas over elephant corpses in the Serengeti less hungry for blood than Rose was right now.  Max was _still_ digging her thumb into Chloe’s palm, trying to wake her up.  She was using her thumbnail now, trying to inflict enough pain to bring about consciousness.

“I know I can’t _strictly_ blame you for how my life turned out,” Rose said.  “I’m not crazy, I’m not… I’m not un _reas_ onable.  But… symbols have meaning.  And you’re a big one, Max.  I’ve tried to be a nice person, but the world just isn’t cooperating with me.  And I know… I _know…_ that I’ll never be free until you’re dead.”

Rose freed a hunting knife from a sheath she had on the belt of her jeans.  Max’s breath caught in her throat, and she pressed down on Chloe’s palm so hard that she though the first joint on her thumb would snap back.

Rose brought the tip of the blade down gently on Chloe’s beanie.

“And we start with her,” Rose said, putting her teeth into her smile again.  “I know you love Chloe very much.  But I _am_ going to kill her tonight.”

Rose brought the blade up just inches away from Max’s face, and Max recoiled instinctively.

“I’m going to open her up from her belly button to her chin, and empty her out right in front of you.  And the damnedest thing is, with the drugs I just put into her system, she won’t even know she’s dead.  She won’t even make a sound.  And when I’m done, if you cry enough… If you’re _sorry_ enough… then I’ll kill you quick.”

Max, heart hammering in her chest, pressed her thumb as hard as she could into Chloe’s palm…

…and finally, mercifully, Chloe squeezed Max’s thumb.

Now began the search for whatever stalling tactic she could think of to buy Chloe time to fully come to.

Rose smiled.  “Let’s get started, shall we?”

And now time was up.  Max’s brain had no idea what to do to stop this atrocity from occurring… but Max’s body seemed to operate on its own.

In the following instant, as Rose’s eyes broke contact with Max’s to look down at Chloe, the thing that was most impressed upon everyone else in the room was that Max Caulfield had no idea how to deliver a head-butt.

Anyone well-trained in that particular maneuver would counsel the head-butt _er_ to aim their forehead to the bridge of the nose of the head-butt _ee,_ which would greatly reduce the trauma to the head of the person delivering the blow, while completely wrecking the shit of the person receiving it.

Max did not know this, instead opting for the forehead-to-forehead smash that wound up hurting her more than it did Rose.

The only advantage that Max had in this situation was that Rose was completely stunned by this turn of events, so much so that she had dropped the knife she was holding.

And it was this advantage that Max would exploit to its fullest.

With a speed that she had no idea she possessed, Max picked up the knife with one hand, while dragging Rose in front of her with the other.  Max’s hand, seemingly moving of its own accord, put the knife to Rose’s throat.

The first emotion to come to Max once her body became her own again was complete and total dismay.  Her head was in agony, her hands were shaking, her bowels had turned to water, and tears were streaming down her face.

Was this what Chloe felt like, doing all the badass stuff that made Chloe Chloe?  Did she want to cry, and scream, and puke, and piss herself all at once like Max did right now?

Sean Prescott’s reflexes were slow.  Only now did he raise the gun at Max.  Max brought the steel fully against Rose’s throat.

“Let us go,” Max said.  “Or I will kill her.”

Sean had his poker-face on.  “See, Max, you’re a sweet girl.  I don’t think you have it in you.”

Max looked at the side of Rose’s face and made the conscious decision to dig the tip of the hunting knife into the flesh of Rose’s throat, near the windpipe.  Rose stiffened, and Max saw a bead of blood fall.  Max’s stomach did a flip.  Not because drawing blood was hard… but because it was far too _easy._

“I agree,” Max said.  “I don’t think I have it in me, either… but I don’t _know_ that I _don’t._ Please… _Please…_ Don’t make me find out.”

Max found out that Rose was on the verge of tears when she said the two words Max wanted to hear least in the world.

_“Do it.”_

Nothing, not a taunt, nor a plea, nor a rejoinder found its way to Max’s lips.  She was utterly dumbfounded.

“Sean,” Rose said, the tears finally seeping in.  “Life gives _her_ things, only to take them away from me, and now this little cunt is about to _finally_ get her hands dirty.  You will _not_ give her this!  I don’t care if I live, as long as _she_ dies!  You can’t… You can’t… _YOU CAN’T JUST LET HER KEEP_ WINNING!”

Rose had finally given into pure sobbing. Sean looked her over… and lowered the gun.

“Well, Max?” Sean asked.  “You heard the girl.”

And with that, Max Caulfield was lost.  It wouldn’t get her, or Chloe, or Victoria, or Warren out of here, but she would take the life of another human being anyway, this much was certain.  She’d gone too far…

Max readied herself for the loss of Rose Fichtner’s life and her own soul, when a scream rent the air in two.

She looked to her left.

Victoria Chase did not _run to_ Sean Prescott.

Victoria Chase _flew at_ Sean Prescott.

Max didn’t even see her leave her feet, but she was airborne all the same, fist pulled back like a superhero in a comic book splash page.  She brought the full force of her elbow right into Sean’s face, knocking the top half of his body behind the chair, obscuring him from view.  From there, Victoria straddled Sean and began pummeling the absolute, biblical fuck out of his face.

So distracted was Max by this recent turn of events, that she did not see Rose bring up her hand.  She used her fingernails to dig into the flesh of Max’s own hand.

Max dropped the knife.

Fearing less for herself than her fallen father figure, Rose leaned forward, and dug the revolver out of the back of her jeans.

She pointed it at Victoria, and…

* * *

**_Booommm…_ **

Drugs were still in her system, her head was pounding, but Chloe Price managed to stop time anyway.  She rose to survey the scene.

Rose was pointing a gun at Victoria.  It would be so easy to just take it out of her hand, let go of time, and finish the little bitch once and for all…

…but given how impaired she was, Chloe didn’t trust herself with a firearm, even at point-blank range.

Chloe peered into the pocket of Rose’s hoodie, and another option presented itself.  But she would have to work fast.  The throbbing of her head and the drugs in her system meant that she would pass out again in a few moments.

She got to a sitting position and reached out to the living stature of Rose Fichtner.  She wrenched the revolver out of her hand, which was an act that required most of the strength she had at her disposal.  She placed it on the ground and scooted it to the other side of the room, near Warren, whose look of impressed terror at his wife’s savagery was plastered to his bloody face.

From there, strength waning, she reached into the pocket of Rose’s hoodie and carefully liberated the syringe that she had dosed Chloe with minutes before.  She examined it, and saw that she had not needed much of the Sufentanil to be subdued.  Apparently a little went a long way.

Chloe stuck the needle into Rose’s neck, and pressed the plunger down a little.

She let go of time.

Rose’s finger came down on where a trigger was supposed to be.  She saw that she was unarmed, and just now got acquainted with the fact that she had been dosed with her own drug.  She turned around with a look of fear, and saw Chloe.

As the dark closed in again, as the drugs took hold, as her head ached, as a slim tendril of blood came trickling down her nose, Chloe summoned the last of her remaining strength to raise her left hand…

…and extend her middle finger.

* * *

Chloe and Rose dropped to the carpet at the same time.  Max instinctively put a hand on Chloe’s shoulder.

The sound of each of Victoria’s punches to the prone, most likely unconscious face of Sean Prescott had become meatier and wetter than the last, each punctuated with what was Victoria’s favorite word.

_“Fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker… FUCKER!”_

Victoria stood up and screamed a scream that was guttural, triumphant, and furious in one measure.  Her right hand was a slick, crimson mess halfway up to her forearm.  Her face turned red, and an enormous vein on the side of her neck stood out.

She stopped screaming, took a couple of deep breaths, and collected herself.  Victoria turned around and looked at Warren.  They went to each other and engaged in a kiss that would have been sweeping, romantic, and fit for the silver screen, had both husband and wife not been delicate, each too afraid to get blood on the other.

As soon as the kiss broke, Victoria turned to Max, and took another deep breath.

“Um… Max?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry I took a swing at you this morning.  It was… like… _really_ beneath me.”

So struck was Max by the oddity of that statement that she didn’t respond right away.  She had to shake herself to do so.

“Hey, it’s alright.  You okay?”

Victoria looked down at her hand, and then back to Max.  “You know, all things considered, I actually feel _better._ You?”

Max reached up to her throbbing forehead and felt the knot from the head-butt that was already beginning to grow.

“I need Tylenol,” Max said.  She reached town and started rooting through the unconscious Rose’s pockets.

“Are you… looking for Tylenol?” Warren asked.

“I’m looking for _keys,”_ Max said.  “We need a way out of here.”

“Can’t we just call the cops?” Warren asked.  “They’ll get us out of here.”

“Lorraine… _Rose…_ ditched out phones, remember?  And she doesn’t seem to have one.”

“I’m not touching _him,”_ Victoria said, limply kicking at the down-for-the-count Sean Prescott.  “I just got done touching him _repeatedly.”_

Max found the keys and jingled them in front of the other two.

“Would you mind driving?” Victoria asked.  “Warren’s not up to it, and uh… I think I broke my hand.”

“Okay,” Max said.  “But one of you needs to help me with Chloe, and the other needs to get that file.”

Victoria picked up the file with her good hand.

“Uh, Max?” Warren asked.

“Yeah?”

“What do we do with…”

Max understood.

“We have evidence on _him,”_ Max said, “and _her_ real name.  They’ll run, and it’ll be away from us.”

Max closed her eyes and sighed, relishing what she was about to say.

“They’re finished.”


	19. The David Cameron Principle

**Chapter 19: The David Cameron Principle**

_August 30, 2019_

At half past midnight, Rose Fichtner stared, eyes wide, into the bright lights of a vending machine to wake herself up.

She remembered being jostled awake by the very bloody, very concerned Sean just forty-five minutes before.

A quick perusal of their surroundings found that their quarry of two schoolteachers, a detective, and a literary agent, in addition to overpowering them, had taken their guns and Rose’s knife, as well as the keys to the Escalade, leaving Sean and Rose unarmed, and minus a mode of conveyance.

Rose, shaking off the after-effects of the Sufentanil that the Price woman injected into her neck, suggested a 7-11 a mile away from Pan Estates as a place for the two of them to regroup.

They trekked through the woods, staying away from the main roads.  The four would most likely be going to the hospital, and from there, one conversation (and one delivery of a certain accordion file) would bring the cops down on their heads.  Sean had been eager to impress this upon Rose when they were planning the entire endeavor against the life of Max Caulfield: Chloe Price had cleaned up Arcadia Bay, which meant Sean had none of his old contacts within the ABPD.

Rose swallowed some of her anger and reached of her wallet.  She freed three singles and pumped them into the vending machine, pushing the button for Aquafina twice.  Two bottled waters in hand, she walked to the side of the 7-11, free from light and security cameras.

The blood-drenched Sean Prescott had just hung up a payphone, after making calls with quarters that he bummed off of Rose.

Rose handed him one of the bottles of water.

“Thank you,” he said, minding his manners.  He opened the bottle, bent over, and dumped the water over his face, getting blood and marked-up hydration all over the pavement, mindful not to get his blazer wet.

Once the bottle was empty, he shook his head out, stood up straight again, and looked at Rose.

“How do I look?”

Rose winced.  All in all, the beat-down that Victoria Chase had given him looked worse than it actually was.  His nose, as well as his left eye, was swollen shut.  His cheek had been opened up, but had since stopped bleeding.  And Sean needed only to talk for Rose to see that two teeth had been knocked from his top row, as well as one from the bottom.

He had missed a few spots.

“I’ll be right back,” Rose said.

She brought up her hood and walked to the squeegee station near the gas pumps, and took a couple of the blue paper towels from the dispenser, and made her way back.

She opened the second bottle of water, got one of the paper towels wet, and began getting some of the blood and grime off of Sean’s face.

He hissed in pain.

“Quit being a baby.”

“Quit being so harsh.”

“I’m trying to make you look presentable.”

The sound of police sirens came from a couple of miles off.  If Rose had to guess, they were now converging upon Pan Estates.  Caulfield, Price, Chase, and Graham had gone to the cops by now.

She knew that Sean knew it, too.  Their repartee was silenced by the far-off prospect of the law.

Finally, Sean spoke.

“I got off the phone with a driver I still have in town.  He’s taking me to an airstrip.  I’m getting out of here.”

“How are you going to get past airport security with the cops breathing down your neck, a face looking like it does, and no luggage?” Rose asked as she continued the clean-up job on Sean’s face.

“Air _strip,”_ Sean said.  “Not air _port._ I own the strip.  Own the plane, too.”

“Where are you going?”

“Switzerland,” Sean said.  “That’s where a lot of my money is.  The bank even has special business hours where you can come in and just _look_ at your money… That should make me feel better.”

Another silence.

“I’m sorry,” Rose said.

“About what?”

“About _everything._ The plan, Caulfield… I’m sorry you had to hear about your son from Chloe Price.”

Sean nodded.  Rose could see that he was trying to keep an emotion off of his face, though _which_ emotion that happened to be, she could not say.

“Truth be told,” Sean said, “I’ve been sorry about my son since the day he was born.  Nice of you to join the club with me.” 

Rose smiled.  Another silence.

“You know I can’t bring you along,” Sean said.

Rose’s smile faded.  She knew she wasn’t coming along with Father the second he brought up that he was leaving, but hearing it still hurt.  It exposed how low their relationship was, how complicated she made his existence, and it poked holes in the lie she used to keep herself warm at night.

“I know,” Rose said, trying not to let disappointment and sadness into her words.

“I mean, I would if I could, but…”

Sean didn’t finish his sentence.  Rose would have given almost anything for him to do so, to _not_ just trail off like he did.  But _what?_

“There,” Rose said as she mopped up the last of the blood on Sean’s face.  “Done.”

Sean stood up straight.  “Thank you… Are you going to be okay on your own?”

Rose wanted to ask him if it made any damn bit of difference in the world if she’d said no.  But all she could manage was a shrug.

It was at this point that a car pulled up to the front of the gas station.  It was a black luxury sedan, built for carting rich people from place to place.

“My chariot awaits,” Sean said.  “Goodbye, Rose.”

Rose sighed.  She knew, in the marrow of her bones, that she would never see Sean Prescott again.  It drained her of all emotion.

“Goodbye, Sean.”

Sean began to walk toward the sedan, but about halfway to his destination, he stopped to turn around and look at Rose again.

His mouth opened, as though he had rethought what he was going to say.  He did it again for a second strike, before he finally settled on something.

“You always did what I wanted,” Sean said.

Rose had heard stories, myths, legends around the Blackwell campus of how awful a person Sean Prescott was, even six years after his exodus from Arcadia Bay.  With all these stories, with all this build up of ill-will that the town, collectively, refused to let go, Rose was not so unreasonable to think that _all_ of these stories were untrue.

If half of them, if a _third_ of them were true, then Rose supposed that _“You always did what I wanted”_ was the closest Sean Prescott had ever come to saying _“I love you,”_ and meaning it.

Rose smiled.

She’d take that.

* * *

The joys of a dreamless sleep.

They were joys that Chloe Price had forgotten in the past week, and they were joys that Rose’s dose of Sufentanil provided.  They were joys whose absence Chloe resented upon waking.

She was in the backseat of a vehicle that was vaguely familiar.  Her head was in Max’s lap.

“She awakens,” Max said.

Once Chloe’s vision came into focus, she pointed to the knot on Max’s head.

“Where did you get that?”

She could see Max blushing, even in this darkness.  “I, uh… I head-butted Rose to stop her from hurting you.”

Chloe took a moment to process this.  “You _head-butted_ her?  That’s…”

_Hot._

“…unexpected.”

Max smiled, but it didn’t last.  It was ushered off stage by a look of deep uncertainty.

“I almost killed her,” Max said.  “I had a knife to Rose’s throat.  I was… I was ready to put her down.  I _would_ have, I know I _would_ have, if Victoria hadn’t…”

Max didn’t finish.  Chloe was still logy from coming off the Sufentanil, still coming to grips with being awake, so she wasn’t as eloquent as she’d liked to have been for this situation.  All Chloe could muster was…

“Well… did you?”

“Did I what?” Max asked.

“Kill her?”

“Um… _no.”_

“Well,” Chloe said, “there ya go.”

Max didn’t appear to see where this was going.  “Yeah, but I _could_ have.”

_“Anyone_ could have,” Chloe said.  _“Everyone_ could have.  _You_ didn’t.”

“Yeah, but…” Max sighed.  “I just know, given how this works, in another timeline, I killed that girl.”

“But not _this_ one,” Chloe said.  “That’s all you can take responsibility for.”

Max nodded.  It may not have made her feel good, but Chloe knew Max felt _better,_ at least.

“Where are Warren and Victoria?” Chloe asked.

“At the hospital,” Max said.  “Warren got cut open really bad during the crash, and Victoria broke her hand punching out Sean Prescott.”

Chloe could feel the childish, uncomplicated smile break out on her face.  “But we _didn’t?_ Go to the hospital, I mean?”

“I tried to think like you,” Max said.  “Talking to the hospital meant talking to the police, which would have meant giving them the file.  I knew you’d never forgive me if I did that.”

Chloe thought about that for a second.  “I’d have forgiven you,” she said.  “It just would have taken awhile.”

Max smiled.  “But Warren and Victoria did talk to the police, I’d imagine, so I asked them to leave us out of it.  For a little while, anyway.  With any luck, Sean and Rose have been arrested by now.”

“So you just… _left_ them there?”

“We had nothing to tie them up with, and there were no phones to call the cops,” Max said.  “They were both down for the count anyway.  Plus, I took their car.  And their weapons.”

Chloe widened her eyes to better assess her surroundings.  They were indeed in the back of Sean’s Cadillac Escalade.

She looked back at Max, and smiled again.

“Head-butting fools and stealing cars.  I am a bad influence on you.  A bad, fun, sexy influence.”

Max smiled and kissed Chloe on the forehead.  “Are you okay to walk?”

Chloe thought about this.  “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

Max opened the rear door of the Escalade and helped Chloe to her feet.  She wrapped Chloe’s arm around her own shoulder as a means of support, using her other arm to holster the accordion file.

The walk from the Blackwell student parking lot (hindsight telling Chloe that Max wouldn’t want to park a stolen vehicle in the _faculty_ lot) was longer than it should have been.  The ground and gravity were both crafty negotiators.  Her feet, much less so.

Max opened the door to the house, and didn’t bother closing it until Chloe had been deposited safely on the bed, in a sitting position.

“I’m gonna go put some Neosporin on my hand, okay?  Rose scratched the hell out of it.”

“Okay,” Chloe said.

“I’ll be right back.”

_“Right back”_ was a relative term, Chloe found, because in the few minutes Max was in the bathroom, Chloe fell headlong into another funk.

She was tired, and she knew what going back to sleep meant.  Another dream of the storm.

Yes, it was a herald of the thing that was going to kill her, she’d gotten used to that.  But there was something else, subtext that was slowly becoming text, that was laying Chloe low at the current moment.

More than a sign of her death, it was a sign of her _insignificance._ It was a removal of the sham perpetrated on all people, _by_ all people, that told her that she was the one who controlled her destiny.  Massive, eldritch pieces were being moved across an unimaginably huge board.  Chloe wasn’t one of the pieces.  Chloe wasn’t even a spectator.  She was just one of the many motes of dust covering the board.

And the thought galled her and saddened her in equal measure.  There were still times when Chloe had to stop and think to herself that she transitioned into adulthood much more gracefully than anyone, including herself, could have possibly hoped for.  She had a job.  She had respect.  She paid her bills on time.  She loved someone who loved her back.  There was still enough of the eternally disgruntled teenager left in her to lose an hour here and there to rage and self-pity, but when those hours passed, she knew that that rage and that pity were indulgences that she could afford.  All the responsibilities she had, she chose.

But _this?_ This was chosen _for_ her.  Chloe wanted to kick, wanted to scream, cry, tap out, anything to get this cup to pass to someone else.  She had grown up enough to know that angst sucked and that being happy felt good. 

So why couldn’t the powers that be just _let_ her be happy?

Why wouldn’t the universe stop picking on her?

“You’re _out_ of it.”

Chloe looked up.  Max was standing in the doorway.  Even though she was standing in silhouette, Chloe could feel Max’s eyes on her.

Max walked to the bed and put her hands on Chloe’s shoulders.  “Let’s get this jacket off.”

With minimal help from Chloe, Max peeled off the black jacket off of her girlfriend’s body and dropped it to the floor.

“Arms up,” Max said. 

Chloe put up her arms, as though she were using both of them to signal that she knew a question in class. 

Max took off Chloe’s beanie, dropping it next to the jacket on the floor, and then took off Chloe’s plain gray t-shirt in a manner so sloppy that it came inside out as soon as it was liberated from Chloe’s body.

Wearing nothing above the waist save a black bra, Chloe sighed.  But between the inhale and the exhale, Chloe saw Max as a constant, _her_ constant, the weight that didn’t so much tether her to the earth, but rather made sure she didn’t blow away.

As Max barely made the three-pointer with Chloe’s shirt into the hamper on the far side of the room, Chloe grabbed Max by the hips and pulled her closer.  She lifted Max’s navy blue dress shirt above her navel and started kissing her stomach.

_“Whoa,”_ Max said.  “Um… Okay.”

Chloe’s fingers awkwardly unbuckled Max’s belt, gawkily unbuttoned her jeans, clumsily worked the zipper.  Chloe jerked Max’s jeans down past her hips before they dropped to the floor.

Chloe pushed Max’s shirt back up past her navel and began kissing again.  Her other hand slowly snaked its way up Max’s abdomen, between her breasts, and up past her chin, where she traced her index finger along Max’s lower lip, feeling her breath come forth in whimpers and huffs, and…

“Chloe, stop.”

She did.

Max closed her eyes and let out her breath through O-shaped lips as she collected her thoughts.

“Um… Are we going to be having _fun_ here?  Or is this more desperate and needy?”

Chloe couldn’t answer that question to her own satisfaction.  The words, ideas, and emotions clogged her internal filter.  So much so that she thought that the best idea, in this very moment, was simply to remove it.

She took Max’s hand and placed it on her chest.

_“Feel_ this,” she said as she felt her own thudding, somewhat irregular heartbeat channel itself from her bare skin into Max’s hand.

“The world… has gotten bigger,” Chloe said.  “It’s gotten scarier.  I don’t know where I fit anymore.  I… I need to go somewhere that’s _mine._ Somewhere… somewhere I can’t be found.  I need to push against something and feel it give a little so I know I’m here.  So… so I know I _matter._ Can I do that?... Can I be that for you?  I’m… I’m not making sense, am I?”

Max looked down at Chloe, her blue eyes bluer in the moonlight streaming through the window.  She had this habit of smiling without moving her mouth.

“Desperate and needy it is,” Max said.

Max bent down and kissed Chloe.  She took Chloe’s hands in hers, guided them to the waistband of her underwear, and helped Chloe pull them down.

* * *

 

_Now the cold makes itself known._

_The storm swirls and shimmers, drawing heat form the air and giving nothing back but gray, and wet, and_ cold.

_The roar was deafening now, so violent and raucous that it muted the thunder within it._

_So vast was this finger of God that it obscured the sky…_

* * *

Chloe snapped awake.

It was still dark out.

She looked over at the clock on the nightstand, and saw that it was 4:22 AM, still about an hour away from sunrise.

Chloe considered it odd that she felt more awake now than when she’d been awake with Max just two hours before.  She looked over at the sleeping Max, who had a habit of kicking the covers off in her sleep if she was particularly tired.  She was on her stomach, and the sheets were lowered down to her calves, revealing everything above.

She leaned over and kissed the starfish-shaped exit scar she’d gotten in the Blackwell bathroom six years before, and then brought her feet down to the floor.  More than her aching joints, more than her beautiful sleeping girlfriend, more than even the doom and gloom that had been a constant hanger-on for the past few days, one thing bit at her brain and refused to let go.

It was something Sean Prescott had said at Pan Estates the night before.

_“Your mother refused to cooperate, but something had to be done.  As I understand it, insurance will cover everything, but she’s not going to want to rebuild in what’s going to become the middle of nowhere, so she’s going to make out like a bandit.”_

Chloe rubbed her eyes.

_Now just how the hell did he_ know _that?_

She stood up and stealthily went into the closet to get dressed.  Her Sam Fisher impression continued until she got out into the hallway.

Chloe turned on the light near the couch in the living room and got the accordion file, which Max had dropped near their shoes when they came in the house a few hours earlier.

It was time to get to work.

As she perused the file, she opened up Max’s laptop on the coffee table and started looking things up, and cross-referencing said things.

What she found was… _enlightening,_ to say the least.  So enlightening in fact, that she completely neglected to notice the rising sun outside the windows.

Or, for that matter, the two hours after that.

“Good morning?”

Chloe looked up.  Max was standing in the living room in Chloe’s old Chikara t-shirt, the black fabric coming down over bare hips.  She had her just-woke-up face on, and she was digging the crud out of her eyes.

So intrigued was Chloe by her findings that she forgot to be embarrassed about how mopey and sad she’d been the night before.

“Good morning,” said Chloe, and collected some of the papers back into the file.

Max widened her eyes to wake herself up a little bit more. 

“So… breakfast?”

Chloe looked at Max, and then held up the file.

“City Hall first, then breakfast.”

* * *

Arcadia Bay’s City Hall had stood in the middle of town for over a century, and while the square around it sometimes got tagged, and while the pavement near the street in front of it became infested with cracks and the occasional tuft of grass growing between its stones, City Hall itself remained white and pristine.

Max had never seen anyone cleaning it.

She stayed back while Chloe spoke to the receptionist in the lobby.

“I’m here to see Mayor Newman,” Chloe said.  “He’s expecting me.”

“He’s in his office,” the receptionist said.  “Where he usually is.”

Chloe stepped away and walked up to Max.

“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” Max asked.

“Nope,” Chloe said.  “Watch me work, Mama.”

Max raised one single eyebrow.  _“’Mama?’”_

Chloe blushed.  “I know, it sounded better in my head, I’m sorry.”

Max smiled and took Chloe by the hand as her beautiful, dorky, show-off girlfriend led her to the elevator.

The Mayor’s office was on the second floor, near the end of a very long, very clean, very white hallway that was studded at regular intervals by offices filled with harried looking men in their shirtsleeves.  It seemed to Max that if they ran themselves this ragged running a town as rinky-dink as Arcadia Bay, trying to get a job in a place like Seattle would put them in the hospital.

_“Chloe!”_ Mayor Seth Newman said from behind his giant oak desk with arms wide.

Chloe tipped her fedora.  “Seth.”

“Come in, have a seat.”

Which they did.  Max sat in the chair on the right and Chloe, bringing the sides of her trench coat over the knees of her jeans, sat in the chair on the left…

…and in a move that surprised Max and made Mayor Newman try to hide his own amazement, Chloe put her boots up on the Mayor’s desk.

Mayor Newman’s only response was to blink a couple of times.

Chloe, for her part, had a shit-eating grin firmly in place.

“Make yourself at home,” Mayor Newman said.  His smile was a thin slit in a ruddy face.

“As you can see,” Chloe said, “I already have.”

“Well, then.  I don’t know if you’ve heard, but…”

“Sean Prescott is in town,” Chloe said.

“Well, he _was,”_ Mayor Newman said, “but it seems he split the country.  Given the assault charges that Warren Graham and Victoria Chase are laying at his door, the call will have to be made to Interpol, but given how minor these charges are…”

“I’m gonna stop you right there, Seth,” Chloe said.  “Never mind that assault and kidnapping aren’t _minor,_ but Sean Prescott’s guilty of a hell of a lot more than that.”

A grin made Mayor Newman’s mouth curl.  “Oh, is he?”

“Yes he is,” Chloe said.  “But before we go any further. There’s one question I have to ask you.”

“What’s that?”

Chloe took her boots off of the Mayor’s desk and leaned forward.

“How much did Sean Prescott pay you to sell out Arcadia Bay?”

Max forgot to breathe.  Mayor Newman forgot to blink.

“I beg your pardon?” Mayor Newman asked, his tone dropping to the basement.

Chloe smiled at Max.  “He begs my pardon,” Chloe said, before turning back to Mayor Newman.

“Remember I called you a couple of days ago after the Two Whales burnt down, asking about Trident Construction?  Well, I looked them up, and found out they were owned by a company.  And _that_ company’s owned by a company.  And that company’s owned by a conglomeration of companies.  All of which fall under the umbrella of Prescott Development.”

Max watched Chloe grin as she let that one sink into the room.

“Now,” Chloe said, “I don’t know how legal it is for a land developer to own a construction company, okay?  I’m not up on my anti-trust precedents.  But I _do_ know, because it is a matter of public record, that Trident Construction was contracted by the city of Arcadia Bay to perform municipal construction around town. Not only that, but it’s also a matter of public record the _kind_ of construction they did.  It’s specific and targeted, mostly on load-bearing points throughout all the structures.  It’s the funniest thing, though.  I looked through quite a few of these records, and _all_ of these sites were worked on using inferior materials.  Y’know, drywall where wood should be, aluminum fittings instead of steel ones, that sort of thing.  Now that doesn’t mean the buildings are going to fall over on their own, but if a peculiar weather pattern came roaring through town, like, oh, I dunno, a _storm?_ Then all these businesses would be destroyed.”

Sweat had already begun to form over Mayor Newman’s brow.  “Look, construction contracts are handled through the Department of Public Works, I’m afraid…”

“See,” Chloe said, “now, that’s where you’re wrong.  Because this construction on load-bearing points would, in the eyes of the law, alter the essential structures of the buildings.  But more importantly, they’re altered from an _insurance_ standpoint.  This construction work would void a lot of policies.  And I look around for someone who sells insurance in Arcadia Bay, and the only one I see… is you.”

Mayor Newman blanched.

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “That’s your day job, right?  Because being a small town Mayor pays dick?”

Max found out where she was going with this.  She glared at Mayor Newman.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Yup,” Chloe said.  “You spent town money on needless construction, but that’s okay, because you have it on good authority that the town isn’t gonna be here in a couple of days.  That just leaves you, sitting on a mountain of insurance money that you don’t have to pay out because said construction voided all of their policies.  And being that you have the Department of Public Works fucking with the building code between you and danger, you have a buffer zone of plausible deniability.  And to think if more people could predict the weather, someone would have pulled this scam off a long time ago.”

Mayor Newman’s expression curdled like sour milk.  “I’d be scared if I thought you could prove it.”

Chloe smiled, reached into the pocket of her trench coat, and pulled out two folded sheets of paper.  She separated them, put one of them on her lap, and held out another one.

It must have been important, because Max saw Mayor Newman’s red, puffy face turn the color of hotel linens.

“What’s _this?”_ Chloe asked.  “Why, is this a letter of intent from the Mayor’s Office granting Trident Construction priority over all other construction bids?  Why, it must be, Max, because I think the mayor just lost a couple of pounds in his underwear just now!”

Chloe lowered the letter of intent to her lap.  “How did you know about the storm, Seth?  Were you in the Vortex Club with Sean back in the eighties?  Is the Newman family all rich and moneyed, swapping stories up in Astoria with all the other rich fucks about The Myth of the Traveler, with the Prescotts and the Leonards?”

Given how pissed she was at Mayor Newman, Max was gratified to see that at least he had the Goddamned common courtesy to look ashamed of himself.

“You know what?” Chloe asked.  “Never mind.  I don’t wanna know.  See, I got this from a file that Nathan Prescott smuggled out of his therapist’s office at Haverford the night he escaped—and before you ask, you’re never gonna find Nathan.  No one is.  This therapist?  Darrin Partridge?  He was gonna spring Nathan from the hospital before Nathan sprung himself.  He was in the Vortex Club with Sean, too, so he must have been in on this action.  Now, this file had a shit ton of stuff on Sean, and _this_ on _you._   I asked myself why he’d be dumb enough to keep it in his office, or why he’d even have this stuff in the first place, but I figure it must be The David Cameron Principle.”

Mayor Newman’s eyes furrowed.

“What’s The David Cameron Principle?” Max asked.

“David Cameron’s a British Prime Minister,” Chloe said.  “A few years ago, one of his old school buddies came forward with a story about how when he was at Oxford, he got himself photographed with his balls in a dead pig’s mouth.”

Mayor Newman frowned.  _“Jesus,_ Chloe!”

“I know,” Chloe said.  “I couldn’t believe it either.  Why would this guy, being groomed for one of the highest offices in the world, get himself in such a compromising position?  But then it hits me.  All of those milky little shits have something embarrassing in their closets that they gave to someone else.  That way when they grow up and go into business or politics, and they opt to get into some shady goings-on, then they can’t sell each other out.  Because everyone knows where everyone else’s body is buried.”

Chloe held up the letter of intent again.  “If Partridge has a file on you and Sean, then _you_ have a file on Sean and Partridge.  See, the way I’d play it?  You want to bring Partridge into the fold, get him on your side.  Because you can’t do anything putting a shrink in prison.  But _Sean Prescott?_   That’ll get you re-elected in and of itself… Provided of course, this letter of intent here doesn’t go public.  Because I’m not gonna lie, this looks bad.”

Mayor Newman folded his arms.  “You’re about to blackmail me, aren’t you?”

Chloe beamed.  _“Yuuuuup!”_

Max snorted.

“Here’s the deal,” Chloe said.  “As soon as I leave this office, I’m going to make a phone call.  An hour after that, Warren Graham’s gonna stop on by.  He’s going to tell you that all this weird weather shit that’s been happening lately is basically a countdown timer, and that a massive storm is gonna hit tomorrow.  And because he’s the closest thing to a scientist Arcadia Bay has, you are going to use that as the impetus to evacuate the town.”

Mayor Newman leaned forward.  Sweat was dripping down his face and dampening the collar of his salmon polo shirt.

“Do you have _any_ fucking clue how expensive it is to evacuate a town?  How _long_ it would take?  We need accommodations, we need… we need…”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Chloe said.  She picked up the second piece of paper from her lap and threw it on Mayor Newman’s desk.  He picked it up and looked at it.

“What’s this?”

“Another one of the things in the file Nathan stole,” Chloe said.  “It’s a list of locations and passcodes for all of the underground bunkers Prescott Development built in and around Arcadia Bay in the fifties.  I knew there were a few, but I didn’t know there were _that_ many.  That’s enough for the whole town, from where I’m sitting.  Maybe not enough for the tourists: y’know, the Kate Bradford fans and the Sasquatch Hunters, but they’ll just fuck off to Portland and book early flights out anyway.”

Max stood up as soon as she saw that Chloe was about to.

“Get a shit-ton of school buses and start delivering people to bunkers to ride out the storm tomorrow morning.  You do that…”

Chloe held up the letter of intent.

“…and I’ll make sure you get this.”

Chloe turned toward the door.

“You don’t know if I’ll say yes,” Mayor Newman said. 

Without looking back, Chloe replied.

“You just did."

Max followed her out, sweat forming on her brow, butterflies in her stomach...

* * *

Chloe felt Max’s hand clamped down tightly on hers until they’d gotten to the sidewalk outside City Hall.

She turned to Max.  “Well?”

Chloe knew what she had just done in the Mayor’s office was impressive.

But she did not know that she had been _kiss-me-and-grab-my-ass-in-full-view-of-the-public_ impressive.

Max broke the kiss and put her hand back to her side.

_“That,”_ Max said, “was _incredible!”_

“Apparently it was,” Chloe said, wiping some of Max’s stray spit off of her chin.  “Now all I have to contend with is a giant fucking storm.”

“What do you mean?”

“The storm’s still coming,” Chloe said.  “I have to save the town.”

Max’s face went from swoony and in-love, to dumbfounded and furious.

“Okay,” Max said.  “Your turn.”

Max took Chloe’s hand and placed it over her heart.

_“Feel_ this.”

Chloe felt the steady lub-dub of Max’s heart beneath her hand.

“You _did_ save the town,” Max said.  “Everyone’s gonna be fine.  Your job is over.”

“Yeah, but…”

“I don’t wanna _hear_ it,” Max said.  “Six years ago, I stood on a cliff with a choice: you or the town.  And I managed to choose both.  And now I’m back there again, with the same choice.  And I choose _you._ You saved everyone’s lives, Chloe.  They’ll have a chance to rebuild.  Tomorrow, we’re gonna find Joyce and go underground with her to ride the storm out.  Because you _know_ she’s not leaving, even if we ask her to.  We’ll help however we can, but if you think I’m going to choose a bunch of fucking buildings over you, you’re sorely mistaken.  You saved Arcadia Bay.  Your job’s finished.  You can put your sword down now.”

Chloe looked at Max… and saw that she was right.

Fuck Saturday.  She was going to live to see Sunday.  And many Sundays thereafter.

And she knew that she was responsible, she knew she was an adult… but she was still _young._ The time for rash, grand, and impulsive gestures was still now.

And Chloe had a _whopper._

“Max,” Chloe said.  “Do you want to hear me say something I’ve never said before?”

“What?” Max asked.

“Get my hand away from your boobs.”

* * *

As they had breakfast at Sharky’s they went over what Chloe had in mind.  They ate their meals, smiles broadly drawn on their faces, before they paid their bill, tipped generously, and went for a drive.

On Friday, December 13, 2013, the luckiest unlucky day of Chloe Price’s life, a drunken Max Caulfield had kissed her under the streetlight at Fifth and Harrison after the final Vortex Club party.

It was their first kiss in this timeline, and their first kiss that wasn’t the result of a dare, or performed under the looming specter of death.

Six years later, under golden daylight, they stood, waiting.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Max said.

“Neither can I,” Chloe said, “but it’s Rex Manning Day, and we need to celebrate.”

Max blushed.

Just then, a forest green 2019 Ford Taurus pulled into the spot where The Beast had been parked that fateful night six years before.  Its driver made his exit.

“You know,” Mayor Seth Newman said, “given all of the crap I’m being forced into, I really don’t have time for this.”

“It’s a condition of the deal,” Chloe said.  “Can you do this or not?”

“I can,” Mayor Newman said.  “Just, _Jesus.”_

Mayor Newman looked over Max and Chloe.

“Are we ready?”

“I am,” Max said, as though she were volunteering to take the One Ring to Mount Doom.

“This was my idea,” Chloe said.  “You _bet_ I’m ready.”

“Okay, then,” Mayor Newman said.  “Max Caulfield.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you take Chloe Price to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

Max looked at Chloe, her eyes dreamy, her smile delicate.

“I do,” Max said.

Mayor Newman turned to Chloe.

“Chloe Price.  Do you take Max Caulfield to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

Chloe never thought this would happen to her.  Never thought she’d join in the grown-up reindeer games.  She never thought she’d _want_ to.

She never thought she’d be happy.

Shows what she knew.

“I do,” Chloe said.

“Good,” said Mayor Newman.  “Then by the power given to me by the citizens of Arcadia Bay as their Mayor, you are hereby joined in matrimony…. Now kiss, or whatever.  I have shit to do.”

As Mayor Newman went back to his car, Chloe and Max still delayed, still stared at each other, trying to see when and where the mirage would break.

But Chloe smiled.

“I double dare you,” she said.  “Kiss me now.”

And so they did.

But all good things, no matter how long they last, must end.  Neither of them wanted to break this new first kiss of theirs, but both of them had to.  Their eyes slowly opened, and they stood, looking at each other, soaking in their new lives in the future ruin of an old town.

Chloe looked into Max’s eyes… into her _wife’s_ eyes, and thought…

_Eh, fuck it, the storm’s coming anyway._

**_Booommm…_ **

As Mayor Newman went back to his car, Chloe and Max still delayed, still stared at each other, trying to see when and where the mirage would break.

But Chloe smiled.

“I double dare you,” she said.  “Kiss me now.”

And so they did.

But all good things, no matter how long they last, must end.  Neither of them wanted to break this new first kiss of theirs, but both of them had to.  Their eyes slowly opened, and they stood, looking at each other, soaking in their new lives in the future ruin of an old town.

Chloe looked into Max’s eyes… into her _wife’s_ eyes, and thought…

_The headache I’ll have is gonna be_ so _worth it!_

**_Booommm…_ **


	20. Waste Your Summer Prayin' in Vain...

**Chapter 20: Waste Your Summer Prayin’ in Vain…**

From Fifth and Harrison, Chloe and Max got into The Taxi, and took the main roads home.  They spent the rest of the day indoors.

And in so doing, they missed The Fourth Plague entirely.

The coastal region of Arcadia Bay, however, was dense with townies and tourists, panhandlers and business owners, the young and the old, all made equal by the beauty and the horror of what they saw.

They stood, staring westward across the water at a pair of setting suns, one bleeding onto the other, like an egg with conjoined yolks, or a figure-eight dropped on its side.

The phenomena of the past few days had been violent and unsettling, but _this_ made the normally golden evening glow sinister, as though something pure had been hopelessly and irrevocably perverted.

And there was a common fugue among all those standing on this long stretch of sidewalk by the sand, though none but a few could articulate it.

It felt like whatever was toying with them on such a grand scale was _gloating,_ or taking a victory lap.  The ABPD had begun their door-to-door evacuation efforts, assigning lottery numbers for the opt-in bus evacuation the following morning, but not everyone knew about the storm.  These dual suns told the unenlightened something giant and horrifying was on the horizon.

So the townies and the tourists, the panhandlers and the business owners, the young and the old, all stood rooted to the spots upon which they found themselves, some holding others, some with tears in their eyes, all silent, and all watching.

Except one…

So transfixed was the Arcadia Bay citizenry by the perversion of the sun, that none noticed a teenage girl in a black hoodie walking across the beach.

Rose Fichtner sighed and stared at her feet as she walked.  The sands of Arcadia Bay’s coast had borne the brunt of the recent weather freakiness, as they were still a dusky pink from Tuesday’s scarlet rain.  She knew that these pink sands would dye the white soles of her sneakers pink as well, as sure as mowing a lawn would have dyed them green.

She looked at the twin suns for a moment, before grimly returning to the matters at hand.

_Beautiful._

_I don’t give a shit._

_The world is ending._

_Cool._

Rose came to a tall lifeguard chair that had been in this very spot since the days when Arcadia Bay’s beaches _had_ lifeguards.  The town’s fluctuating fortunes called for the Arcadia Bay lifeguard program to be ditched, and during the town’s boom, it had never been picked up again.  So superfluous was the town’s need for lifeguards that no one had even bothered to remove this eight foot chair from the beach.

Now this lifeguard’s chair was good for nothing better than as a repository for knife-hewn graffiti and seagull shit.  The right rear leg of the chair was spackled with the stuff, as well as two messages craved with a blade: a heart around _“J.B. + W.P.,”_ and an ancient, almost faded _“RACHEL OWES ME MONEY.”_

Where the right rear leg sank into the pink sand of the beach, next to a cigarette butt and a discarded condom wrapper, was a popsicle stick stuck halfway down. 

_Oh good,_ Rose thought.  _No one moved it._

Rose knelt town, took the popsicle stick out of the ground, and started digging.

She knew the pitfalls of entering into something with as many variables to account for as murder, and so she planned accordingly, leaving a contingency plan in the sands of Arcadia Bay.

As the pink crust of sand gave way to its natural light brown during the dig, she unearthed a Ziploc bag that had been taped shut.  Rose brought it up to eye level, used her thumbnail to open the plastic, and emptied the contents into her hand.

A small silver pistol (that she had gotten off a drug dealer for a hundred-and-fifty bucks), and a clip that held five bullets.

Rose loaded the clip, pulled the slide back, put the safety on, and stuffed the gun in the rear waistband of her jeans.

As she walked off the beach to find shelter, she thought about the storm, and how it would wipe Arcadia Bay from the face of the earth.

Rose was fine with this.  Her family was gone, Sean was gone, and she was wanted for a whole host of crimes.  It’s not like she had anything to live for at this point, save one personal matter:

When she got to Hell, Rose wanted to make sure Max Caulfield and Chloe Price got there first. 

* * *

 

Chloe and Max spent most of the rest of that Friday in bed.

Because they just got married, and of course they did.

Were Chloe so inclined to share details of her and Max’s intimate life, she would have said that it was all _“fun,”_ and none of it was _“desperate and needy.”_

That, and for as tiny as Max was, she played one hell of a power game.  If it were some stray symptom of a Napoleon Complex on Max’s part, Chloe was not going to complain.

So rigorous were the activities, in fact, that Max had to break off and take a shower at two.  Chloe joined her.  They washed each other's backs, which led to them washing places that _weren’t_ each other's backs, which led to them turning off the water and engaging in further exertions that would require them to shower _again_ at about five.

Good for them.

And good for Chloe, in particular.  She knew what was waiting for her when she went to sleep.  When she finally fell into dream at 8:15 PM, arms around Max’s waist beneath the sheets, she did so completely exhausted.

And smiling.

* * *

_And now the rank and unbelievable salt smell of it!_

_The storm filled the nostrils as much as it dampened the skin, and sent chills to the bone._

_A view from the bottom, now, as the storm tore the earth beneath it, delivering chunks of dirt and stone to an obscure, uncaring green sky..._

* * *

_August 31, 2019_

Chloe was awoken by a knock at the door a little after midnight, though she did not open her eyes.  She felt the shift in the mattress as Max got out of bed.  She could hear another knock at the door as Max nimbly bounded about the bedroom, putting clothes on.

She heard Max leave, heard her opening the front door, and heard the timbre of her voice, as well as the voice of someone else.

“Chloe?”

She opened her eyes and saw Max in the doorway in sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt.

“Yeah?”

“Is it okay if I turn the light on?”

Chloe got up on her elbow.  “Sure.”

Max’s silhouette walked to the nightstand.  Two clicks of a switch later, the bedside lamp turned on.  It was blinding for a second, but Chloe quickly adjusted.

She saw that Max was holding two slips of paper.  She handed one of them to Chloe.

It said _“19-2.”_

“What is this?” Chloe asked.

“It’s a lottery number,” Max said.  “Trevor stopped by and gave them to us.  In order to get everyone out of town, twenty school buses are going to have to make two trips to the bunkers.  Your number’s the nineteenth bus on the second sweep.”

Chloe took a moment to register this.  “Which number did you get?”

“18-2.”

“So… we won’t be on the same bus?”

“No,” Max said.  “I’ll be leaving before you do.  But in all likelihood, we’ll be in the same bunker.  Trevor said that’s pretty lucky.”

Chloe pulled the covers off and sat up in bed.  _“’Lucky,’”_ Chloe said.  “That’s us all over.”

Max sauntered over to the bed.  She took Chloe’s cheeks in both hands and gave her a slow, sweet kiss on the lips.

“It sure is,” Max said.  “Now get dressed.  We have to pack.  They start the evacuation at four.”

Max informed Chloe that they were each aloud a single bag to take into the bunker, so they had to take only what they needed.

As they examined the house for the things they could not leave behind, they spoke of quite a few things, but two above all else were the most notable. 

The first was the sad, lonely, and violent journey that was the existence of Rose Fichtner.  Being as Chloe was unconscious when Rose told Max of her life, Max recounted the bullet points to Chloe as they packed.

“So she has this hate-on for us because her dad died?” Chloe asked.

“That’s over-simplifying it a bit, but yeah,” Max said.  “Honestly?  I kinda feel bad for her.”

Chloe had a brief, but altogether unpleasant flashback of herself, sitting in her room as a teenager, trying to connect with something into which she could channel her anger at the world after the world saw fit to take her father from her.  She listened to punk and smoked weed.  What she _didn't_ do was go after photography teachers with hunting knives and extension cords.

But admitting to any common ground with Rose Fichtner was, in Chloe’s mind, heresy against herself.

“I _don’t,”_ Chloe said.  “She tried to kill us.”

“I know,” Max said.  “I can still feel bad for her, though.  Just because she took a bad path doesn’t mean a whole bunch of bad shit didn’t happen to put her there.”

Chloe shrugged her shoulders.  “It’s like being mad at the match for starting a forest fire instead of the person who lit it.”

Max, rightly sensing that the conversation was making Chloe uncomfortable, steered to a topic altogether more light-hearted.

Namely: Now that they were married, what would the whole last name situation be?”

“What?” Max asked.  “You don’t want to be Chloe Caulfield?”

“Nah.  Then people would start calling me CiCi.  Like the pizza place.  And then… I would have… to _murder_ them…”

“Fair.”

“What about you?” Chloe asked.  “Is Max Price too much?”

“It _is,”_ Max said.  “It sounds… like… a _really_ expensive hairdryer.  The only way to pull it off is to start going by Maxine, and you _know_ that’s never happening.”

Chloe nodded.

The moment they settled on keeping their last names was the approximate moment that they had finished packing.  Chloe didn’t have much she had to take with her, apart from clothes and a couple of mementos, so they had a single brown suitcase between them, which Chloe elected to carry.  Max had a digital camera around her neck.

“I’ve never taken pictures of a town during an evacuation,” Max said.  “I want to remember the looks on people’s faces.”

Chloe herself did not, but that didn’t stop her form rubbing Max’s shoulder and smiling anyway.

With everything taken care of, and all the lights turned off, Chloe and Max stood near the doorway and took one look back at their home.

“I just remembered something,” Chloe said.  “The Taxi’s gonna get blown away.  That… _sucks.”_

Max took Chloe’s free hand.  “Six years ago, the storm wouldn’t have come this far inland.  I think Blackwell’s gonna be fine.  Which means _The Taxi’s_ gonna be fine.”

“Sooo… We’ll be taking your Nissan to the evacuation site?”

“No,” Max said.  “We’ll be taking Sean Prescott’s Escalade.  I don’t give a shit what happens to _that_ thing.”

* * *

 

The first sign that something was disastrously awry would have been clear to both Chloe and Max if either of them had bothered to look up.

For although it was three in the morning, and although Arcadia Bay was too small to provide very much in terms of light pollution, there were no stars in the sky.

But the full extent of the horror that laid in wait for Arcadia Bay became known to them when the stolen Escalade reached Juspersen Road, which granted a clear view of the ocean skyline.

Max was so surprised by what she saw that she slammed on the brakes, making the tires squeal.  Chloe and Max got out of the Escalade and walked across the road to the small footpath near the cliff that provided the view of the horizon of the ocean.

Only this morning, there _was_ no horizon.

All that Chloe and Max could see from north to south was a great gray wall upon the water.  It bled into the clouds, giving it the appearance of an ever-advancing mushroom cloud.  The only thing to escape it was flashes of lightning, which presaged faraway bleats of thunder.  And underneath it all was a _whoosh_ of rain and wind, giving the storm an undercurrent of white noise, like slight static on an otherwise clear radio station.

The outer ring of the storm was hundreds of miles away, but it was _massive,_ and coming closer.  Chloe felt a suspicion leak into her brain that the bunker idea may not work.  In fact, if one had told Chloe that every map of the United States had to be redrafted after today because of the chunk that this storm would take out of Oregon’s coastline, she would have had no problem whatsoever believing it.

Neither Max nor Chloe had to say that this storm was several magnitudes bigger than the one that had threatened the town in another timeline six years ago, its size the result of several aborted attempts to come into being accumulating into this cloudy vortex of malevolence.

Some things were just obvious.

With no thought going into the gesture, both of their hands reached out, and found each other.

* * *

The citizens of Arcadia Bay had converged on Main Street, which was the evacuation point as mandated by Mayor Newman the day before.

And while Main Street was no stranger to throngs of people, this was its biggest assembly in history… Which is why it so creeped Chloe out that everyone was taking extra care to be quiet.

Chloe knew why.

They’d all seen the storm, too.

She had even seen some people whispering in each other’s ears to be as quiet as possible.  As though the occasion were too solemn to profane with raised voices.  As though they were attending their own funeral.

As though speaking would bring the storm to shore all the quicker.

Chloe moved her fedora further back on her head and hefted the suitcase as Max took pictures of the dismay, the silent terror, the remote hope on people’s faces.

_“Chloe!  Max!”_

The shout broke the pall of gloom so effectively that both Chloe and Max jumped when they heard their names called.

Joyce was standing in the doorway of the Conestoga Tea Shoppe, a little place that served tea and scones that had gone up in the wake of the money and people Kate Bradford and Leonard International brought to Arcadia Bay.  Strictly a tourist spot.  No local would be caught dead there, except for today.

So relieved was Chloe that she had found her mother in such a short amount of time that she had forgotten one important, vital thing.

That there were some subjects on which Max Caulfield had _no fucking chill at all!_

“We got married yesterday,” Max said to Joyce in lieu of a more formal greeting.

The squeal that came from Joyce’s mouth was almost deafening.  Several bystanders trying to find their own little nooks in which to await evacuation stopped and gawked at Joyce, who was now wrapping Max in a bear hug.

“I’m so _happy_ for you!” Joyce said, beaming, as she let go of Max.  She turned to Chloe, at which point all traces of joviality immediately departed from her face.

“And you didn’t invite _me,_ you little _shit?”_

Chloe saw this one coming, which is why her expression didn’t change in light of this outburst, nor in the moment of silence that followed.

Finally, Joyce wrapped Chloe in a hug and kissed her on the forehead.

“Good for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mess it up.”

“Well… You know me.”

Chloe, Max and Joyce entered the Conestoga Tea Shoppe, and Joyce immediately looked at a group sitting on the floor near one of the tables.

“Max and Chloe got married!” Joyce said.

A dull roar from the people on the floor.

“Jesus, mom!”

“You didn’t invite me,” Joyce said.  “That is the price you pay.”

Chloe got a better look at Joyce’s group.  It seemed that running the Two Whales meant that Joyce got her fingers into quite a few of Chloe’s acquaintances.  Victoria (with a bruised cheekbone and a cast on her hand), and Warren (with some gnarly looking stitches near his hairline) were sitting next to each other.  Trevor was also sitting on the floor, right next to…

Max stepped forward.  _“Dana?”_

So _that’s_ why she looked so familiar.

One time Blackwell Bigfoots cheerleader, and current policeman’s wife, Dana Ward rose from her sitting position as she clutched an infant.  She walked up to Max and gave her a one-armed hug, careful not to squish the little bundle of joy.

“Congratulations,” Dana said.

“I should be telling you that,” Max said.  “Is that Brandon?”

“Yes, it is,” Dana said.  “Say hi to Max, Brandon.”

As Dana was tugging on her infant child’s arm to simulate the act of waving hello, Chloe looked Dana over.  Motherhood agreed with some people more than others, and it got along with Dana just fine.  Chloe remembered her from back in the day, and she seemed nicer and softer than the plastics she associated with, and having a kid seemed to bring that to the surface.

A fleeting thought zipped across Chloe’s brain about how motherhood would, theoretically, treat Max.

_Jesus, H. Christ, Chloe.  You just got married.  Baby steps._

_Goddammit, now I don’t know whether that pun was intended or not._

Chloe was about to sit down with the rest of the group when she saw someone in the street outside that made her do a double-take.  There was a single man alone in the street, looking lost, holding an overnight bag as though it contained state secrets.

“Hey!” Chloe said.  “Hey, Luder!”

Michael Francis Luder turned around and made eye contact with Chloe.  He walked toward her, shrugging his shoulders.

“Weird shit is my specialty,” Luder said.  “Weird shit that’s going to straight-up literally _kill me?_ Not so much.”

“You don’t have anyone else?” Chloe asked. 

“No.  I came here alone.  Looks like I’m leaving the same way.”

Chloe sighed.  _Here stands Saint Chloe, patron saint of art nerds, stray Youtubers, and assholes named “Prescott” who carry guns._

“We have a group over here,” Chloe said.  “You’re more than welcome to join us.”

Luder considered it for a moment.

“Sure,” Luder said.  “I mean, why not?”

Chloe brought Luder into the Conestoga and introduced her to the rest of the group.

“This is Michael Francis Luder,”  Chloe said.  “He’s a youtuber of some repute.”

Warren’s eyes lit up.  “You’re the guy who does _World Most Bizarre!”_

“I am,” Luder said.  “You a fan?”

“I’m a subscriber,” Warren said, his smile making him look even more baby-faced.  “What brings you to Arcadia Bay?”

Victoria rolled her eyes.  “For fuck’s sake, Chloe, do you see the evil you’ve just now brought into the world?”

“Hey!” Dana said.  “Don’t swear in front of the baby.”

“Dana,” Victoria said,” your baby is a _baby._ It doesn’t know what a swear word is.  _‘Stratocaster.’  ‘Shit-Weevil.’  ‘Sub-prime mortgage.’”_

Brandon had no response to any of these words.  Victoria looked back at Dana.

“See?”

“Victoria?” Warren asked.  “Just, y’know, for the sake of being _polite?_ I mean, I’m sure Dana would do it for you.”

Victoria sighed.  “I curse my inability to say no to you.”

And with that, Luder and Warren spent the next twenty minutes talking about the scientific ins-and-outs of the paranormal until a voice came over a loud speaker that was set up in Main Street during the night.

_“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now going to begin the evacuation process.  Would the people who drew the number 1-1, please report to your bus.”_

“That’s me,” Joyce said.

One of Chloe’s eyebrows rose.  “You drew 1-1?”

“Yeah,” Joyce said.  “Someone had to go first.”

Chloe and Max stood up and gave her hugs.

“Don’t you worry about Arcadia Bay,” Joyce said.  “This place has a habit of bouncing back when things are at their darkest…. Kinda like you.”

Chloe blushed, thought of how big the storm was, and then embarrassed herself.

“I love you, mom.”

Joyce hugged Chloe and kissed her on the cheek.  “I love you, too.  I’ll see you when the rain stops.”

Chloe’s mother went off to find her bus while Chloe and Max sat back down.  Another thirty minutes of small talk until the call came for everyone who drew 4-1.

Apparently, mothers with small children got to share a number with their offspring, because both Dana and Brandon were set to go.

“Do you have formula?” Trevor asked.

“Yes,” Dana said, “and enough diapers to last a day down there.  You worry too much, Trevor.”

“Judging form the size of that storm, I think I’m not worrying enough,” Trevor said.  He looked down at Brandon.

“I love you, youngster.  Take care of your mom while she’s down in that bunker.”

The tiny, shriveled, newborn Brandon batted his blue eyes at his father, before closing them.

“And I love you, too,” Trevor said to Dana.  They kissed, before Trevor walked her down to her bus.

Trevor came back, and the remaining six shot the shit for another hour.  13-1 came up, and Luder had to go.

He looked at Warren.  “Drop something in my DMs if we make it out of here.  I have a feeling your expertise could come in handy.”

Warren looked like he’d been granted an audience with the Pope.

About twenty minutes after Luder made his exit, 20-1 came up, which meant that Victoria had to make hers as well.

“Max?” Victoria asked.

“Yeah?”

Victoria looked at Trevor, trying to determine how much she could say in front of such unenlightened company.

“Do you remember what you said?  About… y’know… _dreams?_ And how they could have happened elsewhere?”

Max furrowed her brow.  “Yeah?”

“I had a dream,” Victoria said.  “We were at Blackwell, and… and we were friends.  Like, really _good_ friends.  Which means that if, like, circumstances were different, we could have been tight.”

“Yeah,” Max said, smiling.  “I suppose so.”

“Well, having that dream, and thinking about it… it made me realize something.”

Victoria looked unblinkingly into Max’s eyes, and said…

_“God,_ I fucking hate you.”

To her credit, Max’s expression didn’t change.  She did blink a lot, though.

“It _pains_ me,” Victoria said.  “It physically fucking _pains_ me that you’re allowed to breathe the same air that I do.  When I fund gated breathing communities, you are gonna be _Exhibit fucking A_ when I bring it up with my congressman.  Because _Jesus fucking Christ…”_

Chloe and Warren shared looks that said the same thing: _Yeah, I don’t know, either._

_“Wow,”_ Victoria said.  “I hope I remember how good this feels when the painkillers wear off.”

She looked at Warren.  “Warren Graham is a good husband, which is why he will walk me to my bus without my asking him to.”

“He is,” Warren said.  “And he will.”

The husband and wife duo turned and began to walk away.  They hadn’t gone five feet before Victoria smacked Warren on the ass, which caused him to stand ramrod straight and look at his wife.

“You heard me,” Victoria said, before sweetly and gently kissing him on the tip of his nose.

Chloe put her arm around Max’s shoulders, looked down at her, and smiled.

“Imagine your OTP.”

“You shush,” Max said.  “This is actually an improvement for her.”

Warren hadn’t even been back for two minutes after walking Victoria to her bus when 2-2 was called.  Then fall Trevor.

“There he goes,” Chloe said.  “The last good cop in Arcadia Bay.”

“The last good cop _from_ Arcadia Bay,” Trevor said.  “There’s a difference.  The two of you stay the two of you.”

Now it was just Chloe, Max, and Warren inside the Conestoga for the next ten minutes, until 5-2 came up.  Warren’s number.

He hugged Max, gave a fist-bump to Chloe, and then began to walk away.  He hadn’t gone far when Max piped up.

_“See you on the road, Skag!  See you on the road like we saw the Nightrider!”_

Warren turned around and raised his fist in the air.  _“We remember the Nightrider!  And we know who you are!”_

As Warren walked away, Chloe looked down at Max with reproach.

“I’m not even gonna _tell_ you what that reference was,” Max said.  “Watch more movies.”

Now it was just the two of them.  They both looked out the window of the Conestoga Tea Shoppe.  The crowd had thinned considerably.

Max looked at Chloe.  “Follow me while I take pictures?”

“I can do that.”

The sun was supposed to have come up, but the sky was the dank green of old jade.  As though the storm were rotting the very atmosphere from within.

Chloe followed Max on her perverse mission of mercy, creating photo ops where others would have handed out blankets or cups of coffee.  People were desperately making phone calls, hugging loved ones who were about to leave, or when all else failed, just staring at the ground.  And Max commemorated these little slivers of time with her camera, making sure this depth of emotion would last for as long as eyes beheld images.  She did so without interfering, save once.

“Hey,” Max said to a burly red-haired gentleman holding a cigarette.  “Can I bum one off you?”

The red-haired gentleman seemed preoccupied with something else, because he dispensed a cigarette without saying a word.

“Max,” Chloe said, “you don’t smoke.”

Max handed the cigarette to Chloe.

“I quit.”

“I know you well enough to know you desperately want one,” Max said.  “Normally I wouldn’t do this, but I know you’re driving yourself nuts right now, seeing all these people.  Seeing that storm.  Wondering how all of this is gonna fall apart.”

Chloe took the cigarette.  Max took Chloe’s hand.

“You _saved_ Arcadia Bay,” Max said.  “I’m gonna keep saying that until you get it.  I don’t care how big that storm is.  You saved Arcadia Bay.  Now go have that cigarette and calm yourself down.”

Chloe nodded, and went to find a place to have the last cigarette of her life.

The alley between the Conestoga and the post office.  She coughed with the first puff, lightweight that she fucking was now, but smoked so intently it seemed that she had it down to the filter in an instant.  She dropped the butt on the ground.

Looking at the wisp of smoke emanating form the ravaged remains of the cigarette, some weird notion took her.  Maybe it was seeing Max take all those photos, trapping those instants of time forever, but…

**_Booommm…_ **

Spiral.  Shimmer.  The stoppage of time.

The wisp of smoke halted its skyward advance.  Everyone on the street froze in tableaux.  A particularly charming young woman not ten feet away had been in the process of hocking a loogie on the red cobblestones of Main Street, and that loogie was frozen halfway between her mouth and the ground.  All had stopped.

So why did she hear white noise?

She looked to her left.

The storm was still spinning.  Still belching thunder.  Still brandishing lightning.  Chloe and the storm were the only two things that still had the ability to move.

Chloe let go of time as a small headache was about to set in.

_Ohhhhhhh, FUCK!_

Chloe was a detective.  She put two and two together for a living, and now, at this moment, she had never hoped that they would just this _once_ equal five in her entire life.

Chloe knew how to stop the storm.

And Chloe knew, deep in her bones… that doing so would kill her.

The realization gutted her without using a knife.  She hoped that she could sit this one out in the bunker with Max, hoped that the storm wouldn’t be as bad as it looked.

But this was Arcadia Bay.  And Arcadia Bay liked to wipe its ass with Chloe Elizabeth Price’s foolish, idiotic, ill-placed hope.

_I believed something_ good _was gonna happen!_ Chloe thought.  _I actually fucking_ believed _that!  How fucking stupid_ am _I?_  

She was close.  She was _so fucking close_ to seeing Sunday with her wife that all dream and aspiration within her seemed like sick jokes perpetrated upon the self in the wake of this revelation.

_“Would the people who drew the number 18-2 please report to your bus?”_

Max’s number.

As she walked to the park bench where Max was sitting, she played all the variations in her head.  She needed to know for _certain._ There was no margin for error anymore.

Would this storm—this storm that she could _stop—_ spare the bunkers?  Would it leave them safely underground instead of ripping them from the earth and scattering them across the Oregon interior, dooming all inside?

Chloe had an answer to that question.

And that answer was _“Maybe.”_

And _“Maybe”_ just wasn’t good enough today.

As she approached Max, Chloe tried to wipe what she had just learned and whet she was about to do off of her face.  Because Max would know, and then Max would either talk her out of it or do something stupid because they loved each other that much.

“How did Victoria say it?” Max asked.  “Chloe Price is a good wife, which is why she will walk me to my bus without my asking her to.”

“She is,” Chloe said, trying not to cry or scream.  “And she will.

And so they did.  They got in the back of the line for Number 18-2.

“Do you want to take the suitcase?” Chloe asked.  “I just worry I’ll lose it, or something.”

“Sure,” Max said, and took the suitcase.  Chloe leaned in to kiss her and wrap her in an embrace, closing her eyes as she did so.

“I love you,” Chloe said.

“I love you, too,” Max said.  “I’ll see you at the bunker.  Everything’s going to be fine.”

Chloe opened her eyes.

_No._

_It won’t._

Chloe let go, as she knew she must.  She wanted to tell Max how sorry she was… but all she could do was smile at her wife in a last ditch attempt to keep the tears at bay.

She watched Max get on the bus, and watched the bus go down the road as another bus pulled up.

_“Would the people who drew the number 19-2 please report to your bus?”_

Chloe’s number.  For a bus that she would not be boarding.

The outer ring of the storm had finally reached shore.  The first drops of salt-smelling rain began to fall, and the wind began to pick up.

Trench coat billowing behind her, Chloe pulled her fedora down over her head Bogart-style, and walked back into town. 

To fight.

To die.

To save the woman she loved.

And to defend her home.


	21. The Last Temptation of Price

**Chapter 21: The Last Temptation of Price**

_July 13, 2017_

Rose Fichtner sat in the office at Haverford Asylum, picking the scabs on her knuckles.  Two burly orderlies named Hank and Otto were standing behind her.

She examined the office in which she sat.  Degrees in subjects Rose had never heard of from institutes of learning that Rose hadn’t known existed studded the walls.  And at its center was a polished oak desk, remarkably free of clutter.  The papers in both the in and the out boxes were neatly stacked and held down by silver paperweights.  And at its forefront was a black nameplate with the letters done in gold.

_Dr. Darrin Partridge._

Minutes passed before the man himself entered the room.  He looked like he was designed by the same people who make high-end gourmet corndogs that carried triple-digit price tags: filling the need for something low and common, but made by rich hands and with the best ingredients.

Doctor Darrin Partridge wore black shoes with no scuffs in their leather, and crisply creased khakis with neither frays, nor the traces of wear that plagued the wardrobe of everyone else who worked in the hospital.  He wore a deep purple button-up with neither tie nor coat.  His graying black hair was cropped as close as that of Roman soldiers, and a pair of rimless spectacles only served to magnify pitiless blue eyes.

Rose looked at Doctor Partridge, and saw a man dressed as a healer, enjoying all of a healer’s luxuries, while holding no interest in serving anyone save himself.

Doctor Partridge sat down at his desk and opened a file he was holding.  He looked at it for a few moments before _tsk-tsk_ ing.

“Miss Fichtner,” Doctor Partridge asked, “would you care to enlighten me about what went on yesterday?”

“That file there doesn’t tell you?” Rose asked.

“Oh, this file tells me quite a bit, but files are one thing, and testimony another.  Please indulge my curiosity.”

Rose folded her arms in her seat and looked at Doctor Partridge out of the corner of her eye.

“Okay, who the fuck _are_ you?” Rose asked.  “Where’s Doctor Bennett?”

“I relieved Doctor Bennett of his responsibility toward you.  I’m your therapist, now.  And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“Someone put their hand on me in the rec room,” Rose said.  “I told him he shouldn’t do that.”

“It says here you punched him.  Broke his nose.”

“Well,” Rose said, “that would be me telling him, wouldn’t it?”

Doctor Partridge merely blinked and nodded.

 “That man whose nose you broke was named Gilbert Arias.  He’s twenty-three-years-old, with an IQ of seventy-two.  He came in here because he tried to burn his grandmother’s house down.  Damnedest thing, though: if you keep him away from matches, he’s one of the sweetest kids I’ve ever met.  I asked him why he touched you, and do you know what he said?”

“Do I look like I give a shit?”

“He said that he slipped, and grabbed on to your shirt to keep from falling,” Doctor Partridge said.

Rose leveled her green eyes at the doctor.  “Now he knows not to slip and fall near me.  See?  It was a learning experience all around.”

Doctor Partridge nodded again, before going back to the file.

“Doctor Bennett tells me you’re not active in your group therapy sessions.”

“No one has the right to what I’m thinking,” Rose said.  “Not Doctor Bennett, and not the other whackjobs I’m in group with.”

“Ah,” Doctor Partridge said, “with one exception.  In a session a week ago, you were asked to write down the one thing the made you the most angry in all the world.  And you wrote down…”

Doctor Partridge yanked a familiar slip of paper from the file.  It was the one Rose had written on during therapy last week.  The green from the felt-tipped marker with which she had written had bled through to the back.

He read the slip of paper.  _“’Max Caulfield.’”_

The Doctor’s frown deepened.  Rose made her face stone and stayed just as silent.

Doctor Partridge folded his hands over his desk.  “You’re sixteen-years-old, Rose.  You’re still in foster care, barring this little detour to my establishment.  You’re two years away from aging out of the system.  Which means in two years, if you break someone’s nose, you go to prison.  And I guarantee you, if you show your ass like you’ve been doing, you will _not_ live to see nineteen.”

Rose sneered.  “Is this your Come-to-Jesus speech?  Your little scare-straight tactic to get me to clean up my act and be nice to the foster kids who try to step to me instead of laying them the fuck out like I’ve _been_ doing?  You trying to tell me to straighten up and fly right?”

“No,” Doctor Partridge said.  “I’m trying to tell you that today’s your lucky day.”

Rose scanned Doctor Partridge’s face.  Rose hadn’t had a lucky day since before her father died, and she held an innate suspicion of people who told her good things were coming to her.

Doctor Partridge stood up.  “Right this way, Rose.”

Rose and Doctor Partridge, flanked by Hank and Otto, walked down a drab, brown-tiled hallway to one of the therapy rooms, which looked more like converted classrooms to Rose than anything else.

Doctor Partridge opened the door to Room 108, and bade Rose to enter.

Inside was a man in a blue blazer over a beige cardigan, sitting in one of the sturdy plastic chairs that numbed Rose’s ass during group sessions.  His slacks were black, and he was wearing loafers.  He also had a pair of rimless glasses, much like the ones Doctor Partridge was wearing.  He had a boyish face that clashed with his graying hair.

“Thank you, Darrin,” the man in the cardigan said.

Doctor Partridge eyed the man in the cardigan with a flat gaze before leaving.  He did not take Hank and Otto with him.

“Have a seat, Rose,” the man in the cardigan said.

Rose sat in the chair across from him, folding her arms and staring at him out of the corner of her eye.  He seemed to be _too_ familiar with her.  She pilfered through her own memories trying to place him, but all older white guys kind of bled together for her.

“Who are you?” Rose asked.

The man in the cardigan smiled.  “I don’t suppose you’d remember me.  I knew your father.”

Just hearing mention of Daddy made the bottom of Rose’s stomach drop, as though she were on a rollercoaster, but she tried not to show that on her face.  She narrowed her green eyes.

“How?”

The man in the cardigan rubbed the back of his neck.  “There’s only one question you should be asking right now.”

He stood up.

_“’Do I want… a burger?’”_

Rose had no choice but to look at him square on, which is the reaction she had to anything so weird.

_“Huh?”_

“Because _I’m_ hungry,” the man in the cardigan said, “and I could really go for a double bacon cheeseburger.  Onions, tomatoes, the whole deal, and it would be _rude_ of me not to invite you.  Now, before you ask, I will not subject you to fast food, okay?  I’m not gonna feed you _horsemeat._   If we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do this right, so I am inviting _you_ to come with _me,_ and grab a burger at as fine a dining establishment as we can find.

Rose rolled her eyes.  “Oh, for fuck’s sake…”

“What?” The man in the cardigan asked.  He seemed genuinely confused and almost offended.

“Are you one of those rich guys who troll insane asylums looking for crazy teenage strange?”

The man in the cardigan laughed.  The motherfucker even seemed possessed of enough propriety to _blush._

“Oh my _God,”_ the man in the cardigan said, wiping an eye underneath his glasses with his index finger.  “Is that… is that a _thing?_ Do people _do_ that?”

“I don’t know,” Rose said.  “Because if it is, and you do, then you look like the kind of problem violence can solve.”

Rose heard one of the orderlies crack his knuckles behind her.

“No,” the man in the cardigan said.  “I don’t want to do anything of the sort.  Everything here… _completely_ above board.  If you like, you can invite your two burly friends back there to keep me honest.”

Rose looked him up and down.  _“Why?”_

“Well,” the man in the cardigan said, “we have something in common.”

“We do?”

The man in the cardigan smiled.  _“Sure_ we do.  See, once upon a time, the two of us were doing just fine.  We had family around us, we wanted for nothing, God was in His heaven, and all was right with the world.”

The man in the cardigan sat back down again.  He was no longer smiling.

“But for you, all of that changed in a girls’ bathroom at a high school in Arcadia Bay, Oregon.  All of that changed with a young lady named Max Caulfield.”

Rose involuntarily started grinding her teeth.

The man in the cardigan straightened the cuffs of his blazer before looking at her again.  “And what if I told you that my fortunes fell the exact same way.  On the exact same day.  Concerning that exact same Miss Caulfield.”

Rose didn’t feel her expression soften, but it must have.  She felt the corners of her mouth ache from the frown she had let go of.

_“How?”_ Rose asked.

The man in the cardigan leaned forward.

“My name is Sean Prescott,” he said.  “And I need to tell you my story.”

* * *

_August 31, 2019_

A torrent of frigid rain pelted Arcadia Bay from a dull green sky.

Being as the main power grid for the town was located outside its limits, the lights in Arcadia Bay were still on.  Shop windows still peddled their wares, and solar-powered streetlights were still providing an amber glow to the inundated pavements beneath them in spite of the fact Arcadia Bay was, for all intents and purposes, a ghost town.

But even this wasn’t technically true.  Arcadia Bay still hosted two signs of human life.

One of which was Chloe Price, who soldiered down Bergeron Boulevard, her fedora channeling rainwater in a long spout in front of her, dousing her sweatshirt.  Her trench coat was so soaked that it was sticking to the back of her jeans.

And she was doubting herself… but really, that was no different than any other day.

She knew that storms brought rain, and she knew, in theory, that a large storm would bring lots of it.  But as she walked, chilled to the bone, every layer of clothing completely soaked through, she wondered whether or not she had jumped the gun.  Whether or not the storm _really would_ destroy a huge chunk of Oregon, and all of the evacuated townspeople along with it.  Her resolve to stop the storm was still strong, but she didn’t want to freeze to death or drown in the rain before she had the opportunity to do so.

_My corpse’s face is gonna be red if I die stopping this storm and everything was gonna be fine anyway,_ Chloe thought.  _My funeral will be a hoot.  Here lies Chloe Price: She died because her scrawny ass was a Drama Qu—_

**_Booommm…_ **

Chloe’s power kicked in automatically, without her wishing it to, and she was gripped by an immense pain.  Not in her head (although that was coming), but in her chest.  She looked in front of her, and then looked down, and pieced together what had happened.

This had been the…

_Okay, I got shot_ once _in the Blackwell bathroom,_ once _in the junkyard… No, wait,_ twice _in the junkyard.  One of those I did myself by accident._

This had been the _fourth_ time Chloe Price had been shot to death, and she could safely prove the old maxim true: You never hear the shot that kills you.

A bullet was hovering two feet in front of her, sending the air around it into transparent ripples.  The front of her chest was an explosion of blood and… were those little bits of _ribcage?_

_Cool!_

_Ow!_

This was the instant when Chloe Price would have died… well… _instantly._

And she knew damn well who was standing on the sidewalk behind her, holding the gun.

Chloe held out her hand and began the rewind.  The bullet slowly began inching backwards as the rain fell up.  The burning hunk of metal re-entered her chest.  She could feel bone reassembling and organs knitting back together.

And it _hurt like a motherfucker!_

She felt the skin on her back close up, and she turned around as the headache was beginning to grow unbearable.  Rose Fichtner was standing there, her hoodie obscuring the scars on her face, the muzzle flash from her gun still bright.  The bullet was still traveling backwards, into the barrel of the pistol.

Chloe gripped the bullet between her thumb and forefinger, and let go of time.

_Bang!_

She imagined what this must have looked like to Rose: Sneaking up on an unsuspecting woman and pulling the trigger, only to have her catch the bullet before her brain processed that she had pulled the trigger.

That would have explained the fear on Rose’s face.

Rose instinctively backed up as Chloe threw the hot bullet into the street with a flourish.  Then she brought the gun back up again.

Shewas quick.

Chloe was quicker.

**_Booommm…_ **

Spiral.  Shimmer.  Headache.  Stop.

Hand held out, Chloe closed the four feet between her and Rose.  With her free hand, she took the gun away from the teenaged girl trying to kill her.

Chloe let go of time, and Rose’s trigger finger came down on nothing.

Chloe took less than a second to savor the expression of intermingled fury and horror in Rose’s eyes before she pistol-whipped her on the scarred side of her face, sending her splashing to the rain-soaked sidewalk ass-first.

The Great Punk Detective wiped a small stream of blood from her nose before she pointed the gun down at Rose.  To Rose’s credit, she didn’t cower from her own death.

_It would be so easy to just put this little mistake down…_

Chloe remembered that morning when she and Max were packing, when Max was telling her the story of Rose Fichtner, the girl who had called herself Lorraine Foster.  She remembered recoiling inwardly at even the very possibility of she and Rose sharing any kind of common ground whatsoever.

But now?

Staring at the furious, ready-to-die teenage girl on the sidewalk, that common ground was _all_ Chloe saw.

_Well… I guess I’m not doing the easy shit today._

“You are the only person in human history ever to lose two straight fights to Max Caulfield,” Chloe said.  “It’s adorable you think you’re scary.”

Chloe saw that she was standing near a storm drain, and took this opportunity to deposit the gun within.  She could hear it splash in the flooded sewer beneath them.

Rose was inching away, so Chloe used her right hand to grab her by the collar of her hoodie.  Her left hand balled into itself.

_Thwack!_

Chloe’s fist glanced off of Rose’s cheekbone on the unscarred side of her face.  Chloe could hear her grunt in pain.

_Thwack!_

Her second punch sank into the connective tendon that joined the jawbone to the rest of the skull, and Rose grunted again.  Chloe pulled her left back a third time, and…

_CRACK!_

In a switch-up, Chloe brought a hard, unforgiving elbow into Rose’s mouth, and this was the point that the scarred teenager started howling.

_Never let it be said that I let her get away scot-free,_ Chloe thought.  She grabbed Rose’s shoulders and got right in her face.

“Sean ditched you,” Chloe said.  “He left the fucking country, and you’re still here doing his dirty work.”

Rose spat out one of her front teeth, and a small pool of blood to go with it.  _“Fuck you!”_ she said.  _“I’m loyal!”_

“No,” Chloe said.  “You’re controllable.  You’re so pissed off at the world that you’ll follow anyone who indulges you.  You don’t want to be _happy._ If you were, you’d tear your hair out trying to figure out what to do with it.  You want to be _right._ You’d _kill_ to be right.  Because if you’re right, then the world revolves around you, and it was against you the whole time.”

Chloe brought Rose closer.  The steam from each woman’s breath mixed in the air.

“And I know this,” Chloe said, “because when I was your age?  I was the exact same way.”

Chloe let that hang in the air.

“Someone very wise told me recently that if you’ve only ever met someone at their lowest point, then you haven’t _met_ them at all… And I don’t think I’ve met you yet.”

Chloe threw Rose to the ground, and stood, looming over her.

“And that someone was Max Caulfield,” Chloe said.  “And if you _ever_ meet her again, the _one_ thing you will do before running as fast as you can in the other direction is thank her.  Because she just saved your fucking life today.”

Chloe turned and walked away.  She had gotten three feet before she heard whimpering mixed with the falling rain.

She turned around.  Rose was still on the sidewalk.  And she was crying.

“It’s not fair,” Rose said, letting a dribble of blood fall from her broken mouth.  _“IT’S NOT FUCKING FAIR!”_

Chloe had a very real, very burning desire to tell her that _life_ wasn’t fair.

But then again, Chloe had come to find that life wasn’t particularly _unfair,_ either.

Life was just life, and went on regardless of what anyone thought of it, and all the fairness and unfairness of existence came from the people you surrounded yourself with.  How good were their hearts? How long was their reach?

It was strange like that.

But Chloe thought all of that would have sounded stupid if she said it out loud, so she just walked away.

* * *

Further into town Chloe went, away from the business district and into the residential suburbs leading to the outskirts of town.

She heard footsteps on the pavement behind her.  A flash of fear bloomed within her at the scenario of Rose having followed her after her beatdown, coming back to finish the job, but that flash tapered away almost as soon as it came into being.

From the sound of them, these footsteps were too small to be Rose.

She knew _exactly_ who was following her.

Chloe called over her shoulder without stopping.  “Fuck off, Tobanga!”

But the footsteps continued unabated behind her, telling Chloe that Tobanga did not, in fact, fuck off.

Chloe whirled around, sending a sprinkle of rainwater from her drenched hat and soggy coat.  Tobanga was standing six feet away, smiling.  Chloe glared at her, part in irritation, and partly because one of Tobanga’s supernatural powers was that she could stand in a massive storm and not get wet.  Her jeans and Oregon Ducks jersey looked like it had come fresh from the dryer.

After a moment, Chloe turned around again and resumed her march.  Tobanga continued to follow.

Tobanga didn’t say anything.

No, but as though she were answering through demonstration the question _“What would annoy Chloe Price the most right now?”,_ Tobanga started _singing._

_“We some southern boys, with the farmer strength, ain’t NOBODY MAN ENOUGH TO FEEL THE PAIN!  And you could be next, you better get respect, ‘cause ain’t NOBODY BREAKIN’ THIS REDNECK!”_

Chloe whirled around to face the immortal being staking her.  “Oh my _God,_ what the _fuck are you doing?”_

Tobanga’s grin grew wider.  “I’m playing you to the ring!”

Chloe’s natural reaction to this was to let her expression sour further.

“Oh, _c’mon!”_ Tobanga said.  “This is the match of the century!  Chloe Price versus the biggest waterspout in recorded history!”

Chloe just blinked.

“A waterspout is a tornado at sea, Chloe.”

_“I know what a fucking….”_

Chloe stopped talking and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Look,” Chloe finally said.  “Let’s just pretend—just for a minute, not too long—that you’re _actually_ useful.  If you were actually useful, what would you do or say right now?  Because if it’s _nothing?_   Say and do _that.”_

Tobanga cocked her head to the side.  “No one will know you did this.”

Chloe got chills hearing that, though she didn’t know why.

“All they’ll know,” Tobanga said, “is that a storm came and then broke apart before it reached shore.  They’ll have no idea why.  No idea who gave their life to save them.  If you get a big-ass tombstone in Arcadia Bay Cemetery, it’ll be because Max paid for it.  Not because of your merit as a human being.  There aren’t going to be spontaneous outpourings of grief in public.  There isn’t gonna be a Chloe Price Day.  I’m not saying it’s right… but it is what it is.”

Chloe sighed before she spoke.

“And the reason you’re saying this is… what?”

Tobanga started smiling again.  “You knew this already, didn’t you?”

Chloe put her hands on the wet hips of her jeans.  “Do you honestly think I’m sacrificing myself for the fucking _applause?_ I’m doing this because it needs to be done!”

“And it’s just that simple?” Tobanga asked.  “How many people do you think would walk into certain death if they drew your number?  Because I have to tell you, from personal experience?  It’s not many.”

Chloe blinked, and behind her eyelids in that split second she saw pale skin, blue eyes, brown hair, freckles, before the illusion of happy memory cracked when the blink concluded.

“Just one,” Chloe said.

Tobanga folded her arms.  “Well shit, Chloe, it seems like you have your mind made up… I _knew_ there was a reason I liked you.”

Chloe turned and walked away.  No footsteps followed her.  But Tobanga called out anyway.

“You sure you know where you’re going?”

Chloe was sure.

She knew _exactly_ where she was going.

* * *

The door that was supposed to be locked was not locked.

Chloe was covered in mud from her heels to her knees after her trek up the hiking path at Koch’s Folly that led to the lighthouse.  Chloe was halfway up the cliff (that was a hell of a lot slippier and slidier in this torrent of rain than she would have liked), before she remembered that the door to the lighthouse had been locked for years.  She didn’t have her picks on her, and the lighthouse was the sturdiest building in town for what she had planned.  If she couldn’t get in… well, she’d think of something.

But when she got to the top of the cliff, after looking over the ocean to see that the storm had gotten a hell of a lot bigger and a hell of a lot closer, she saw a bright yellow post-it note on the lighthouse door.  It was hung high up, near the top of the doorframe, to keep it dry, no doubt.

She read.

  _Thank you for letting me fulfill my purpose.  
_ _I know something you don’t know.  
_ _-S._

_Samuel._ And he was writing of himself in the first person.  Nothing sane could come of this.

Chloe knew there was no one around, so she had no problem letting her thoughts out through her mouth.

“Could this town stop being weird for _five Goddamn minutes?”_

Chloe tried the door, and the knob turned effortlessly underneath her hand.  It had been jimmied open.

She had spent so much time out in the rain that not feeling it coming down on her clothes felt weird.  She stood and dripped in the entryway after she closed the door behind her.

The glass display counter that served as the base for the gift shop had been emptied, behind which the similarly bare postcard racks had been placed.  And though the floor was still carpeted (and moldy-smelling), nothing else from the lighthouse’s former time as a tourist destination remained.  Save for two books on the top of the counter, whose titles she couldn’t make out from this range.  The only light in the room came from the one window to the side of the long spiral staircase that stretched all the way to the top of the structure.

Chloe took of her coat and threw it on the display counter, where in landed with a wet splat, and she gently placed her fedora on top of it.  She wrung some of the excess rain from her sweatshirt, and stamped her muddy boots before sitting down on the metal spiral staircase.

She listened to the wind and the rain outside, spatter helplessly against the ancient and sturdy brick and concrete structure of the lighthouse.  This place was ancient, built to last, and was the only place in town that had a shot in hell of standing up to what needed to be done.

She emptied her head of all thought, because all of the thoughts she wanted to think were frightening.  Chloe flattered herself, in her younger and more malcontent years, that she would go out in a blaze of glory, but since her life had come within a millimeter of ending on a skuzzy high school bathroom six years prior, she had devoted little thought as to how she was going to go out at all, save for the moments when her life was actually in danger.  Gunned down by a drug dealer?  Drowning after she had jumped into Koch’s Folly to escape The Bull?  Gutted by a crazy millionaire’s even crazier protégé in an abandoned executive suite?

No.  Chloe had been right the first time.  She was going to use time-travel powers to face off against a massive storm.

Blaze of glory it was.

As she warded off all cohesive thought over the next hour, using the still-advancing storm as white noise, a truth slowly made itself known to her: Waiting for death was still waiting… and waiting was _boring._

Chloe got off of the spiral staircase and walked over to the display counter where the two books were.  She picked them up and wiped the dust off.  _From Outer Space_ by Jose Chung, and _The Sudden Stop_ by…

She heard the doorknob to the lighthouse door slowly turn.

“Oh, shit…”

Chloe readied Jose Chung’s _From Outer Space_ in her hand, ready to throw it at the intruder.  Aiming right for the head, the scarred face, the green eyes, the broken mouth of Rose Fichtner.

_I_ knew _I shouldn’t have let her live.  I_ knew _this was gonna bite me in the…_

The door opened, and a familiar figure entered.

Chloe dropped the book.

“Oh, _Goddammit, Max!”_

Max Caulfield closed the lighthouse door behind her, before turning around.  The rain had soaked her to the bone, made her paler, bringing out the knot on her forehead and the strip of raw flesh around her throat from her misadventure with Rose and the extension cord.  Her camera was still around her neck.

And she had fury in her eyes.

“Has anyone ever told you,” Max said, “that widowing someone the day after you marry them is a _really shitty thing to do?”_

Chloe rubbed her face.  “I don’t think you get how this whole saving the town thing works, Max.”

“Oh, _bullshit, I don’t!_ I took a bullet for this town, _and_ for you!”

Chloe couldn’t say anything to that.  She had her there. 

“Why couldn’t you stay in the bunker?” Max asked.

“I think the better question here, is how did you get _out_ of the bunker?”

Max put her hands on her hips.  “It isn’t a prison, Chloe!  I saw you weren’t in the bunker, knew _exactly_ what you did, and asked to leave.  I signed a liability waver, and I came here.  _Why didn’t you come with me?”_

“You _saw_ that storm,” Chloe said.  “You know damn well that the bunkers aren’t going to save anyone!”

“Do I?” Max asked.  “Do _you?_ How can you be so sure?”

_“I’m not!”_ Chloe said.  “I don’t know if I’m panicking, or if that storm is gonna rip the shit out of Oregon, but I _do_ know that I’m not betting Arcadia Bay on an I-Don’t-Know, alright?  I’m… I’m not betting _you.”_

And mercifully, that seemed to still Max’s anger.

“Okay,” Max finally said.  “So… So what’s the plan here?  What exactly are you going to do?”

Chloe sighed and assembled the thoughts she spent the last hour trying to banish.

“I was having that cigarette you bummed for me, and… and for some strange reason I stopped time.  I wanted to… I dunno… live in one of the pictures you were taking this morning.  And I look up, and I see that the only thing moving is the storm.  Time stopped, but the storm was still spinning… And I realized two things.”

Chloe scratched behind her ear.  “The first thing is that the reason these powers don’t work outside of Arcadia Bay, is because these powers don’t _affect_ anything outside of Arcadia Bay.  That storm was so far out of range, that my powers didn’t do anything to it.”

Max nodded.  “And what’s the second thing?”

“The second thing,” Chloe said, “is that these powers and that storm both come from the same place.  Which means _something_ has to happen when they interact.”

Max looked at Chloe out of the corner of her eye.  “So…”

“I’m going to rewind the storm,” Chloe said.  “By hand.”

“Using your powers?”

Chloe nodded.

“You have no idea that that’s going to work,” Max said.  "For all you know, you could do something _worse."_

"You saw that storm," Chloe said.  "Define ' _worse.'_ Max, why do I have these powers?  Why did Jennifer Healy?  Or _you?_ The Traveler rewinds time, The Traveler brings storm.  We were given powers we weren’t supposed to use!  That makes no fucking sense!  But… But what if it’s more complicated than that?  This power, and the thing this power brings, _link_ somehow.”

“So,” Max said, “if I just _rewound_ the storm six years ago, then I wouldn’t have had to go to another timeline to eat a bullet and save everyone?”

“This is just my theory,” Chloe said, “but… _technically?_ That last storm was a hell of a lot smaller than _this_ one.  You’d have had to go into town to rewind, and there aren’t any buildings down there sturdy enough to withstand it.  You could have tried, but I think a building would have come down on top of you instead.  Or you’d have been blown away, or something.  This lighthouse is the only safe place I could think of doing this at.”

Something just occurred to her.

“Max, how did you know I was here?”

“Oh,” Max said.  “That…”

* * *

_Ninety minutes earlier…_

The dip in Delaware Street was evened out by the downpour.  The storm was visible over the trees, and Max Caulfield was chilled to the bone.

She had to keep a hand over her eyes as a visor against the torrent of precipitation pelting Arcadia Bay.

_Good_ Lord, _Chloe…_

Max remembered Chloe gloating last year about how she turned The Bull's own into his opposition after she found out that he was an informant for the FBI.  She used his own extravagances against him because he was, in The Bull’s own words, _“a dramatic motherfucker.”_

Max supposed it must have taken one to know one, because this was Chloe all over.  Her wonderful qualities were veined with a self-loathing streak that coincided, on occasion, with acts of heroism.  Chloe wanted to—

Rose Fichtner emerged from the corner of the block that Max was leaving.  They almost bumped into each other.

Max backed up, eyes wide with terror, and did the only thing she thought to do in situations like these, when the tools were at hand.

She raised her camera, and took a picture.

She brought the camera down, and Max saw that Rose was staring daggers into her… but she wasn’t _moving._ More so, there were bruises on the unscarred side of her face, and she was bleeding from the mouth.

“I think she’s going to the lighthouse,” Rose said, revealing pink and broken teeth.

A moment passed before Max figured out that she could respond.

“How do you know?”

“Because a storm’s coming,” Rose said.  “That’s what they’re there for.”

* * *

“And then she just walked away,” Max said.

Chloe saw that Max was eying her up and down.

“You broke her mouth.”

“Yeah, well,” Chloe said, “she shot me, so…”

Max examined Chloe’s body for bullet wounds.

“Don’t worry,” Chloe said.  “I got better.”

The awkward silence filled the lighthouse as both Chloe and Max tried to figure out what to say next.

“So how does this work?” Max asked.  “You just rewind the storm, and… that’s it?”

Chloe sighed.  “When you had your powers… when you used them… do you remember this, like, _spiral?_ That got shorter the more you rewound?  Like a fuse on a stick of dynamite that burns out?”

“Yeah,” Max said.  “I remember that I could only rewind to the end of the spiral, and I had to stop because the pain got too bad.”

“Max… this storm is huge.  I’m going to have to go past that point.”

The look on Max’s face was uncomprehending.

Chloe put her hands in her pockets.  “I… I don’t think I’ll have anything left after that… I’m sorry.”

Now it seemed that Max understood.  She turned around.

“We were gonna grow old together,” Chloe said.  “Like, _real_ old.  So old that we’d start wearing Canadian tuxedoes.  Y’know, jeans _and_ denim shirts?  I was even gonna start wearing a bolo tie.”

Even with her back turned, she could hear Max snort at that one.

Chloe smiled.  “Matching… white… _perms,_ Max.  You’d take up carpentry so you could make bird-feeders that look like New England bed-and-breakfasts, and I’d get into glassblo—“

_“Stop it!”_

Max whirled around.  There were tears and anger in her eyes.

“Don’t _joke_ about this!  This isn’t funny!”

Chloe stopped smiling, and opted to speak softly.  “It’s my life, Max.  It’s my death.  These are my terms.  I’m going out a smart-ass.  It's how I lived.”

Max walked up to Chloe and took both of her hands.

“I met you in elementary school, Chloe.  And ever since that day, it has never _just_ been your life.”

Tears started welling in Chloe’s eyes.  She made no effort to hide them or wipe them away.

“Why didn’t we run?” Max asked.  “We… We should have…”

“Because I’m selfish,” Chloe said.  “Because even if I died, I could say that for one moment… just _one_ before the lights went out… that I was as smart, and as kind, and as _brave_ as Max Caulfield.”

Max’s face crumbled, and she buried her face in Chloe’s sweatshirt.

The tears were falling freely down Chloe Price’s cheeks.  “You took a bullet for Arcadia Bay.  You did it for _me…_ I can take a storm for you.  To make sure you’re _safe…_ Because that’s how much I love you.”

A flash of lightning, and a bolt of thunder that shook the lighthouse.

“It’s here,” Chloe said.

“It can wait,” Max said.  “Just… Just a little bit more.”

And so it could.  Chloe breathed in Max’s damp hair, and if the fates saw fit to send her to heaven, then that was one hell of a cloud to go out on.

More lightning, and more deafening thunder.

The rumble from the outside sent dust and stray plaster from the walls.

Chloe’s arms tightened around Max as the smaller woman’s head nuzzled itself deeper into the taller woman’s shoulder.

A moment that should have been an age passed before Max looked at Chloe.  The minimal light brought out her blue eyes, the small knot on her forehead, and the thin, pink strip of raw skin around her throat.

"Chloe," Max said.  "Are you ready?"

She looked down at Max, luxuriated one last time in memories and dreams, past and present, from this reality and beyond…

…and smiled.

They kissed.  It was soft, and it was sweet, and if Chloe went to her grave with this being the only warmth and love that she ever felt, then she could have gone there saying her life had been well-lived.

“I am ready for the mop-shit,” Chloe said.

“Don’t you mean _‘mosh-pit?’”_

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “That, too.  I think you need to get clear, now.”

“I’m not letting you go.”

Alarm sprang in Chloe’s heart.  “Max, I don’t know what…”

Max silenced her with a look.  “I am _not_ letting you go.”

Chloe simply nodded.  She marshaled every force she had within her, every bit of energy she had.  She gripped Max tightly with one hand…

… and raised the other.

**_BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…_ **

* * *

On this dark day in Arcadia Bay, when storm clouds blocked the sun, the only sign of natural light in the town’s exterior was a sudden radiance located in the area of Koch’s Folly.  But that radiance spread over the town as quickly as one of the storm’s flashes of lightning.  The radiance would have looked, to an outside observer, like a shimmer: as though two angles of every physical object were trying to show themselves at the same time.

That outside observer, were such a person raised in America and of a certain age, would most likely have recalled an old dish soap commercial where just one single drop of the product in question sent the caked-on grease on a dirty dish scattering for the edges.

Because that is what it looked like when this mammoth storm made contact with the town of Arcadia Bay, and the radiant energy that coated it.

The wall of water that the storm brought to shore immediately pushed back, breaking up the cloud into an angry mass of conflicting wind and vapor.

Even when the tide rolled back in, it was inhaled into the radiance, leaving behind no trace.

And that outside observer, in the five long minutes it took for the storm to disperse, would have seen the sky steadily brighten, would have seen tendrils of the black cloud of the storm scramble to its outer edges, as though it was trying to get away from the vacuum of radiance converting it into nothing.

Until finally, something else matched the energetic brightness of Arcadia Bay.

The _sun_ came out.

* * *

**_…OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…_ **

The pain was _unbearable._

Blood poured from Chloe’s nose, streamed from her ears, dribbled down her tear ducts, and pooled in the gaps between her teeth.  Her eyes had rolled back to the whites, and veins were sticking out in her neck, her temples, her forehead, seemingly as thick as gym ropes.

And Max just held on tighter.

**_…OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!_ **

And with that, Chloe had nothing more to give.  And the radiance of The Traveler’s power receded instantly from the town, through the lighthouse, and back into Chloe’s body.

At which, three things happened in rapid succession.

The first was that Max held Chloe’s limp body up as all energy left her.

The second was that the lighthouse itself rumbled and buckled, with massive cracks veining the brick and concrete surrounding them.

And the third was that Chloe’s heart stopped beating.

“It’s okay, Chloe!” Max said, holding her up.  “I’ve got you!”

But from what Chloe could immediately gather through the searing pain in her chest, who had who did not matter a single bit.

The last thing Chloe Price saw before she died was the lighthouse crumbling down on top of them.


	22. This Tornado Loves You

**Chapter 22: This Tornado Loves You**

It is said, at the moment of death, that one’s life flashes before ones eyes.  Every mistake, every regret, every joy, every exaltation that forms the crude mosaic of one's time on Earth replays in the fraction of an instant.

So if this narrative accomplishes anything, let it be that a moment of pity was spared for Chloe Elizabeth Price.

For as death, after so many aborted attempts, finally claimed her as her heart stopped and the lighthouse at Koch’s Folly came down around her, she realized something.

She had so many lives to choose from…

* * *

 

Chloe is eight, going to DesRosiers Elementary.  On her first day of school, she comes upon a little girl crying in the corner.  When Chloe asks why, the crying girl says that she has broken her yellow crayon.  After Chloe gives the crying girl her own, she introduces herself.  The crying girl says her name is Max.

Chloe is fourteen, standing in Arcadia Bay Cemetery with tears in her eyes, as Joyce slowly drops a handful of soil on top of her father’s casket.

Chloe is sixteen.  Not here, but… elsewhere.  Her mother and father watch with expectant eyes as she opens a small box on her birthday.  The keys to a brand new car.

Chloe is still sixteen, still elsewhere, when her eyes flutter open in a white room.  Joyce and William stand over her bed with red, tearful eyes as a machine beeps.  She can’t move her arms or legs.

Chloe is nineteen, and back here again.  She sits on her bed making a call she’s made quite a few times in the past day.  It goes to voicemail.

_“Hey, Rachel, um… This is Chloe.  You haven’t answered any of my calls or texts.  I, uh… I’m getting a little_ worried, _here…”_

Chloe is still nineteen, up to her neck in warm water, watching Max Caulfield strip down to her underwear at the pool’s edge.  A small cocoon of peace in a world of horror, as she looks at Max, and begins to burn from the inside.

Chloe’s nineteen the first time the world ends.  It is in a junkyard, with her hands covered in dirt, seeing the first signs of a body bag in a shallow grave.

_“What kind of a world does this?”_

Chloe’s nineteen the second time the world ends, as well, near the ruins of the lighthouse at Koch’s Folly that, paradoxically, still has six years of life left in it.  A kiss… and a declaration of love requited… at the end of the world.

Here’s where things get funny.

Chloe is still nineteen and it’s later, but somehow earlier.  Four days before (yet scant minutes after), she watches Nathan Prescott shoot Max Caulfield in the girls’ bathroom at Blackwell Academy.

Chloe, nineteen, in a hospital room, feeling Max rise from her coma as she grips Chloe’s hand on the day of Rachel’s funeral.  There is joy in Chloe, but also a great suspicion that shamed her in the moment, and haunted her for years.

Chloe is twenty.  Max’s prom night.  Her suit and Max’s dress are on the floor of Max’s dorm room.  They sit on the bed, bare legs around each other in the dark.  Chloe brings a finger down Max’s naked stomach, but stops just beneath the navel.

_“I just want you to be sure.”_

Max smiles.  She kisses Chloe while she guides her hand down further.

Chloe is twenty-one.  She stares at two brown suitcases on the floor of her apartment, waiting for a bolt of lightning to tell her how stupid she is.  When it never comes, she picks up the suitcases and leaves the apartment.  Leaves Seattle.  Leaves Max.

Chloe is twenty-two.  She has come back to Arcadia Bay under a cloud of defeat.  She wears glasses, now, and her hair is no longer blue.  He has settled into her new life, doing favors for low-lifes and, in the current moment, negotiating a truce between two rival groups of cocaine dealers.

_“Don’t tell me that,”_ Chloe says.  _“Don’t send me back across town with that bullshit.  Give me something all of us can work with.”_

Chloe is twenty-four, hot on the trail of an errant watch lost in a poker game.  She comes across the dead body of Justin Williams, bathed in the light of a _Three’s Company_ rerun.

Chloe is twenty-four.  She has spent three years missing Max, and waging a war against that anguish, yet for Chloe’s sins, for Chloe’s great failures, Max shows up on her apartment doorstep after Victoria Chase gets her out of prison.

_"Max."_

_"Hey, Chloe..."_

Chloe is twenty-four.  And nineteen.  And sixteen.  There is a crisis on infinite Chloes as all disparate memories return at once, and Max is the first person she turns to the night she jumps off of a cliff.  Finally, passionately, they kiss after three years in the wasteland.

_“You found me,”_ Max says through her tears.  _“What took you so long?”_

Chloe is twenty-four, sitting next to Max in a rich woman’s house.  The Great Punk Detective is born.  Chloe points to Denise Leonard, sitting across from them in a flimsy, sea-foam green silk robe.

“She _did it.”_

Chloe is twenty-five, and Max Caulfield’s forehead explodes.  Chloe reaches out, and time reverses itself, in the form of both mercy and curse, to let her save the woman she loves.

Chloe is twenty-five, and she stands across from Max on a crummy corner in Arcadia Bay as the mayor of the town walks away.  Max the Girlfriend has been seamlessly replaced by Max the Wife, and damned if the transition doesn’t make the girl _that_ much more beautiful.  Or maybe it’s the new eyes.  Chloe the Girlfriend is now Chloe the Wife as well.

_“I double dare you,”_ Chloe says. _“Kiss me now.”_

* * *

thwack…

* * *

Darkness in the daytime.

It’s Arcadia Bay, but… an _alien_ Arcadia Bay. 

Chloe stands on white sands under a black sky presided over by a blue sun.  The waves calmly lap onto the shore of the beach.

In the distance, Chloe sees two figures holding hands.  She walks towards them.

Standing in the middle of a patch of sand, lit blue as if only for Chloe to find, Max Caulfield is holding hands with Rachel Amber.

They’re both every last bit as beautiful as Chloe remembers them.  Rachel is every last bit the girl she fell in love with.  Max is every last bit the woman she fell in love with and married.  Max is twenty-three, and Rachel is nineteen, and seeing them together, Chloe realizes fully how old she’s gotten.  How many times the world has spun between incarnations of her own being.

And these two women look at Chloe warmly.  As though they miss her.  As though she had just come back from a long vacation and they’re taking this one moment to visually enjoy her resumption of her position in their lives before pressing her for details.

As though they love her.

And it _shames_ Chloe. 

Chloe is not blind, nor is she stupid.  She could list a number of things she’s done, lives she’s saved, people she’s helped, evils she’s stopped that could warrant looks of such devotion from such wonderful women.  But she doesn’t _feel_ that way.  She’s _never_ felt that way. 

But looking at these two look back at her, she feels a quarter-century of pain shrivel away into nothing.  Their gaze is purifying.  Chloe’s Price’s life had deep faults, and was host to great rages and horrifying fuck-ups, yet these two outstanding, beautiful women, in different ways, loved her anyway.

And it is at this point that Chloe realizes that past her self-loathing, past what she’s lost, and past the changes those losses made to her… they _may_ have been on to something.

But seeing these two women aim their almost infinite capacity for love at her using only their eyes is the opposite of a liberation, and yet… it isn’t confinement, either.  It’s not a weight dragging her down to earth, but something buoyant bringing her up from a drowning depth into the air, and into the sun.

Max and Rachel let go of each other’s hands, and the looks on their faces become looks of expectation.

Chloe knows what it means, and she steps forward.

She looks from one to the other, tears streaming down her cheeks, a wide smile making her face hurt in the best possible way.

Chloe kisses the first two fingertips of her right hand, and she places them over Rachel’s lips.  Rachel’s eyes close, and she seems to glow from within.

But her left hand reaches for Max.  They look at each other and smile like they got away with something.

And then they walk away.

Away from Rachel, who smiles as they pass.

Away from the tiny, blue, sunlit spot in this alien Arcadia Bay.

And into the darkness…

* * *

_Thwack…_

* * *

In order for this narrative to proceed further, a word must be spoken about miracles.

Or rather, the lack thereof.

Because when Max Caulfield took the bullet for Chloe Price on October 7, 2013, it affected more than the fates of the players involved.  Indeed, it enacted a further ripple of which she was unaware.  And that ripple wound up saving her life on August 31, 2019.

When the history—the _true_ history—of Arcadia Bay is recounted by those privileged enough to know it, no hero will fit more in the _“unsung”_ category than Philippe Anton DesRosiers.

Born in Montreal, Quebec Canada in 1878, he grew to be an ambitious man who plied his trade all over Quebec, as well as southern Newfoundland and eastern Ontario.

That trade?

Civil architecture.

DesRosiers was a man who designed bridges and courthouses, post offices and city halls.  Until one day in 1920, a telegram arrived from America.

A council of eight town founders from a burgh in Oregon called Arcadia Bay wished to commission DesRosiers to design and build a lighthouse on a cliff that the locals had dubbed _“Koch’s Folly,”_ which was named after a native of the town, whose stupendous idiocy in the French trenches during World War I (called simply _“The Great War”_ in America at the time) had gotten himself and all under his command killed.

DesRosiers arrived in Oregon by train, traveled to Arcadia Bay by coach, and quickly set to work.

The difficulties arose in the construction phase of the project in 1921.  It seemed that the soil of Koch’s Folly was every bit as dumb and as stubborn as its namesake: it was too soft.  More work and material had to be put into the foundation in order for the lighthouse itself to be successfully erected.  DesRosiers promptly elicited the city council for more money.

Arcadia Bay was in its infancy at the time, and the city council (who would go on to be known as _“The Founding Fathers of_ _Arcadia_ _Bay_ _”_ in the ensuing century) thought it best in these early days to present a united front to the citizens of this new town.  All measures until 1922, the tenth anniversary of Arcadia Bay’s founding, would have to have been passed unanimously, with eight in favor and none opposed.

The measure of more money for the lighthouse construction was brought before the council.  Seven were in favor, and only one was opposed.

That sole voice of opposition was Joshua Trent, owner of the Trent Logging Company, who told DesRosiers in no uncertain terms that he had to make do with the resources at had.

In order to do this, DesRosiers had to abandon his plans for the spiral staircase within the lighthouse itself.  Instead of using the steel he had so desperately wished to utilize, he had to settle for less expensive iron.  The money he saved using an iron spiral staircase went into the foundation, and the project came in at budget.  DesRosiers never forgave Trent in particular or Arcadia Bay as a whole for the budget runaround, and once he left for his native Quebec, he never again set foot on American soil.

The town, however, named the elementary school after him, so any grudges appeared to be one-sided.

When Max Caulfield stood on Koch’s Folly with Chloe Price on October 11, 2013, watching a storm roll in with a photograph in her hand, she did so beneath a destroyed lighthouse.  Because in this particular timeline, Mark Jefferson murdered Nathan Prescott.  And because Nathan was dead, he was never arrested for his crimes, never deemed unfit to stand trial, never sent to Haverford, never _escaped_ from Haverford, never got inhaled into 1906, never became Joshua Trent, never co-founded Arcadia Bay, and never told DesRosiers to make do with what he had.

And so, in this particular timeline, Ross Martin of the Jacinto Logging Company (the man whom Nathan-as-Joshua had bought the logging company from with gambling money) was on the city council instead.  He went along with the others on the council, the lighthouse funding measure was passed unanimously, and DesRosiers got to use his steel staircase.

Yeah, time-travel is complicated and local government matters, but what about _the miracle?_

Or rather, the lack thereof?

The funny thing about steel is that while it’s stronger than iron, it’s a great deal less malleable.  Put simply:

Steel shatters.  Iron bends.

So in the timeline in which this story is set, the one with Max Caulfield shielding the corpse of Chloe Price from a falling lighthouse, the steps whose bottom was just a few feet away, were made of thick, wrought iron.

Firstly, the lighthouse was felled not by a storm, or explosives, but rather a sudden influx of temporal kinetic energy coming from the town, _through_ the lighthouse, and into the body of Chloe Price instantaneously, causing the lighthouse to simply collapse in on itself, resulting in the giant and heavy _light_ portion of the lighthouse to fall harmlessly into the waves of the Pacific below, due to the conical shape of the structure.

Which left a shocking amount of falling bricks and concrete to be accounted for.

Those materials, falling inward, would have landed mostly on the iron staircase, which _bent_ under the weight instead of shattering.  The lower it bent, the more bricks would have fallen, but because that staircase was there, bending and providing resistance, a large number of these bricks would have _also_ sloughed off to the side.

Meaning that the lighthouse would have stopped falling roughly seven feet above its base, moving the statistical probability of survival of anyone _at_ that base, from the _“miraculous,”_ to the _“more-than likely.”_

Arcadia Bay is host to more than its fair share of strange goings-on that may be classified as miracles.  It was, after all, partly founded by a man who pulled off the not-unremarkable feat of dying forty-two years before he was born.  Time-travel, for one thing.  Sasquatches, for another.  Beached whales and red rain.  Eclipses and falling birds.  And, perhaps most strange and mysterious of all: The Sharky’s Surf-and-Turf Dinnertime Special, where you can get an eight ounce sirloin grilled to _your_ definition of perfection and eight—count ‘em— _eight_ buttermilk-battered jumbo shrimp, served with your choice of soup or salad and a large fountain drink for the low, low price of $12.99.

_That’s less than thirteen bucks!_

But the fact that Max Caulfield survived a lighthouse falling on top of her was _not_ a miracle.

Sometimes… Just sometimes… You have to thank the architect.

* * *

**_ THWACK! _ **

* * *

 

Chloe’s eyes shot open.

A blast of air tore its way into her lungs, and the first thing she did was give in to a mammoth fit of coughing.

Once she regained her composure, she noticed three things.

The first was that Max was even more surprised by Chloe waking up than Chloe herself was.  Max screeched, and backed away to the other side of the lighthouse.

The second was that the lighthouse had… _changed._ It was a hell of a lot shorter than it used to be.  Chloe, from her position on the carpet, could see the spiral staircase that used to lead to the top had been compacted by rubble, but said staircase was holding said rubble seven feet off of the ground.  Where once was a door leading into the lighthouse, there was now a hole, leading out.

The third, and strangest of all, was that Max had apparently removed Chloe’s soggy sweatshirt.  With the exception of a dark blue bra, Chloe didn’t have a stitch of clothing on from the waist up.

The coughing fit subsided, and Chloe tried to get back to calm breathing.  She felt weak, and there appeared to be the beginnings of a large red welt between her breasts, as though someone had been wailing away on her sternum.

Before Chloe could think clearly, before she could verbalize _anything,_ Max rushed back to Chloe and put her arms around her as she lay on the floor.  Max was shaking like a leaf.

“You didn’t have a pulse,” Max whispered into her ear.  “You… You were dead.”

Chloe blinked a couple of times.  It hurt to breathe, and she wagered it would hurt to talk as well.

“I… take it I didn’t _stay_ that way?”

Max got up to look Chloe in the eye.  She was still shaking.

“I gave you CPR,” Max said.  Tears were welling in her eyes.

Chloe blinked a couple of more times.  “You… _know CPR?”_

Max wiped a tear form her eye.  “I… I don’t, no.  I read somewhere that you had to line up the compressions and the breathing with _Stayin’ Alive_ by The Bee-Gees, and… and I didn’t know if I was doing it right, so I … I started pounding on your chest.”

Chloe took a deep breath, and winced.  That explained the welt and the pain in her chest.  She thought that Max might have cracked her sternum.

“How long was I…”

“A minute,” Max said.  “Maybe less.”

“It took you less than a minute to start thumping me like I was a broken stereo?”

_“I had no idea what I was doing!”_ Max said.  Her voice got screechy when it went so high.  “I… I just… You were _dead,_ and now you’re _not,_ and I have a Bee-Gees song stuck in my head, and _I have no idea how to feel right now!”_

Chloe summoned some strength to put her arms around Max and bring her back down.  The sobbing Max leaked hot tears onto Chloe’s cold, bare shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Chloe said.  “It worked.  I’m not complaining.  I… thank you… You saved my life… Once more, for old time’s sake.”

Chloe and Max held each other until Max stopped crying.  And even a little while longer.

“Still don’t get why you had to take my shirt off, though.”

Max snorted, and came back up to face her again.

“I thought that’s how you had to do it,” Max said.  “CPR, I mean.”

Chloe smiled slowly.  “I know you need to take the shirt of for a de… defi… those electro-paddle thingies.”

Max started smiling, too.  “And I needed something to wipe the blood off of your face.  There was a lot of it.”

Chloe’s smile tuned into a smirk.  “You just wanted to cop a feel,” Chloe said.  “Admit it.”

“You shush.”

Chloe laughed.  It hurt, but she did it anyway.  “All you had to do was ask…”

* * *

As she sat on the bench outside the remains of the lighthouse, Chloe craned her neck to look behind her.

“Max?  I’m not entirely okay with you going in there.”

Max was standing just outside the new, busted archway into the irretrievably broken lighthouse.

“If it were going to fall down, it would have done so by now.  I’ll make it quick, though.”

Chloe nodded, and then turned her head back again to look out over the water.

Max had helped Chloe to her feet in the lighthouse, as Chloe couldn’t have managed the task on her own.  With her arm around Max’s shoulder for support, she hobbled over to the bench, and it was there, looking out over the water, that Chloe and Max were stunned to the spot.

In the following days, when they could talk with Warren about it, the only explanation they could come up with for the state of the beach was that everything that had been sucked into time, and hadn’t been coughed back up again, was deposited, at once, into the waters of the Pacific Ocean that made up the western edge of town.

The water was _silver._ Not with the sun hitting it, but silver with fish.  The fish that had mysteriously disappeared from Arcadia Bay’s waters in 2013, crippling the town’s fishing industry.  They had all come back, instantly, and they were all dead.

_Jesus,_ Chloe thought.  _This town’s gonna_ reek _in a few hours._

Not only that, but various other things wound up in the water near the shore.  Chloe could see three cars sticking up through the gentle waves, and two overturned fishing boats.  There was even a World War II era bomber planted a few yards out.  And off in the distance, a capsized battleship lay, so big that Chloe could make out the name painted on the side without squinting: _USS Eldridge._

Max came back to the bench with Chloe’s trench coat and sweatshirt over her arm, with her fedora cinched between her thumb and forefinger.  In the other hand, she had a bottle of Dasani.

“They had a case of this behind the counter,” Max said.  “Thought you might want to wash your mouth out.”

“Thanks,” Chloe said.  “Have a seat, Pete.”

Max smiled as she sat, handing Chloe the bottle of water.  She sat the trench coat and sweatshirt between them, and put the fedora on Chloe’s head.  Chloe took a gulp of water, and swished it around in her mouth, getting the blood out.  She spat the rust-colored by-product onto the grass, and then started drinking the water in earnest.

She took off the fedora, and put it on Max’s head as she picked up her drenched, soggy sweatshirt.  She started wiping her face with it.  The green sweatshirt came away from her face as grimy brown.

“Did I get it all?” Chloe asked.

Max lifted the brim of the fedora so she could get a better view.  “Close enough,” Max said.

“Cool,” Chloe said.  She looked down at the sweatshirt, and saw that it was ruined.  Chloe figured she might as well walk back home in what she was wearing.  It was still August, and she wore less than this to the beach.  And it wasn’t like there was anyone in town to gawk at her in her bra, anyhow.

She pitched the ruined sweatshirt off of Koch’s Folly.

Max was not amused.

“Littering,” she said.

Chloe pointed out to the ocean.  “There are, like, dead fish and wrecked planes out there.  I think a sweatshirt is the least of anyone’s problems right now.”

“It’s _still_ littering.”

Chloe sighed, held out her hand, and…

Nothing.

“What is it?” Max asked.

Chloe looked at her hand.  “I… can’t rewind time anymore.”

Chloe and Max smiled at each other.  “Good,” Max said.  “It’s a pain in the ass.”

“From personal experience, I can say it’s a pain in the heart, too.”

“No jokes about that.”

“I talk shit!  I die!  I talk shit again!”

_“Warboys!”_

Chloe laughed, Max smiled, and they took each other’s hands.

“You remember six years ago?” Chloe asked.  “The night we broke into the pool?”

“Yeah,” Max said.

“There are… _things…_ that I’ve always wanted to do.  And… I guess it’s like a reverse bucket list.”

Chloe looked at Max.  “You’re a teacher at Blackwell.  That means you have keys to the pool, right?”

Max looked questioningly at Chloe, before the realization dawned on her.  “No.”

“What?”

_“Please,_ don’t tell me you’re thinking what I think you are.”

“That we put smiles on each other’s faces in fun ways in the Blackwell pool?” Chloe asked.  “That’s _shocking._ And _scandalous._ And… well… _true.”_

“You can _not_ be serious.”

“Oh, I’m serious…”

“Don’t say it.”

“…as a _heart-attack.”_

“God _dam_ mit, Chloe.”

“What?” Chloe asked.  “Is it hard to believe that I’d want to do this after dying today?”

“No,” Chloe said.  “I find it hard to believe that you survived a rainstorm and now you just want to get wet again.”

Chloe giggled.  “That’s… that’s a _very_ interesting choice of words.”

Max’s face turned red.  She eyed Chloe up and down.

“You… shush…”

They looked into each other’s eyes before they kissed in the warm August sun.  It was both an instant and an age before this kiss broke.  But when it did, Chloe and Max leaned their foreheads on each other.

“I love you,” Chloe said.  “I keep saying it, and it never gets old.”

“I love you, too,” Max said.

Chloe put her hand on Max’s cheek.  “I think I’ll let you.  I know I’ve had problems with that, but… I’ll try.  I’m not saying I’m gonna solve it overnight, or that it’ll ever get solved at all, but… I think it’s a start.”

Max smiled.  “Let’s go home.”

Chloe got her coat over her arms and she let Max help her get to her feet.  They made their way down the muddy path back into town, but Chloe stopped halfway down.

Tobanga was standing there.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Tobanga said.

“Yeah, well,” Chloe said.  “Some people do impressions, I jump out of my own grave.  Everyone has a wacky talent.”

“Yeah,” Tobanga said.  “That’s the thing about ancient prophecies.  They can’t reasonably account for cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.”

Chloe just stared at her.

“That’s what CPR stands for, Chloe.”

Chloe wanted to tell Tobanga that she knew good and fucking _well_ what CPR stood for, but she just didn’t have the energy.

“Chloe?” Max asked.  “Who is this?”

Chloe looked at her with wonderment.  “You can _see_ her?”

Tobanga waved.  “Hi, Max!”

Chloe sighed.  “This… is Tobanga.”

“Like the totem pole?” Max asked.

“More like who the totem pole was named after,” Tobanga said.  “At least I _think._ It’s been a while.”

“Tobanga is immortal,” Chloe said, “has power over sunlight, and is an _annoying pain in the ass!”_

“And those are just the three I let you know about,” Tobanga said.  “I have a whole host of tricks up my sleeve, but those three are the most appropriate.”

Max looked back at Chloe.  “And you didn’t think to tell me you met an immortal super-being?”

Chloe had no idea that this would bite her in the ass.  She was all set on stumbling and stuttering an answer, but thankfully, Tobanga spoke first.

“To be fair,” Tobanga said, “you didn’t tell Chloe about when _we_ met, so it pretty much evens out.”

Max’s eyebrows went up.  “We’ve _met?”_

“Sure we have,” Tobanga said, smiling.  “Six years ago when you were going to Blackwell.  Granted, it was in the timeline next door.  I’d tell you who I was, but your face is _adorable_ when you’re confused.  Y’know… all cute and chimpunky.”

Chloe looked at Max.  Tobanga was right.  Max’s chipmunky confused face _was_ adorable.”

“So is this what you do?” Max asked.  “Swoop in when the town needs saving?”

“Only when it looks like fun,” Tobanga said.  “See you around.”

Tobanga was set to walk off, but stopped herself and turned around again.

“Oh,” Tobanga said.  “One more thing.  I could have _sworn_ the door to the lighthouse was locked.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said.  “Samuel the Blackwell Janitor unlocked it.  Left a note and everything.”

“Did he?” Tobanga asked, and her expression darkened.  “Interesting…”

Chloe was going to ask what was so interesting about it, but there was a crack of branches from the thin line of trees to Chloe’s left.

Something was coming toward them.

_“Well,”_ Tobanga said.  “Look who the wind _quite literally_ blew in.”

Chloe looked to Tobanga, but she had disappeared.  Because _of course she fucking had!_

The figure emerged.  He was wearing blue jeans that were slowly turning brown.  His hair was long and black, but thinning up top.  His blue t-shirt was ratty beneath a green blazer.

And on one of the lapels of that blazer, there was a fresh splotch of mustard.

“Hey,” Sunshine Ray said.  “Either of you chicks know how to get to Portland?  King Harvest is playing, and I need to meet my hook-up before I get to the arena.”

Chloe and Max couldn’t speak.  The just pointed, simultaneously, to the road leading into town.

“Alright,” Sunshine Ray said, and looked down at the mustard on his jacket.  “C’mon, mustard, let’s go rock out!”

As they watched the temporally displaced hippie walked toward town, Chloe put her arm around Max’s waist and kissed her on the cheek.  They looked at each other.

“You want to hear me say something I’ve never said before?” Chloe asked.

“What?”

Chloe looked through the trees, and into Arcadia Bay.

“I fucking _love_ this town…”

* * *

And so it came to pass that the biggest waterspout in human history advanced on Arcadia Bay’s shores, and vanished before it made landfall.  The only casualty of this storm was the lighthouse at Koch’s Folly.  The power to the town didn’t even go out.

It would be two hours before Chloe and Max made it to the front doorstep of their little house at Blackwell.  But, strangely, it was another twenty minutes before the two of them emerged again, their destination being the Blackwell swimming pool.  Heaven only knows what they did in there.

It would be another eighteen hours before the citizens of Arcadia Bay left the bunkers.  Nothing was damaged, save the lighthouse, and the bay itself was filled with dead fish and junk that couldn’t be accounted for.  Everyone had more questions than answers, and Michael Francis Luder had a field day with this on his Youtube channel.

It would be twenty-four hours before Chloe, true to her word, gave Sean Prescott’s letter of intent to Mayor Seth Newman.  Mayor Newman never saw the inside of a jail cell.

It would be two days before Victoria Chase drove to Bayview Senior Living Center to visit Nadine Trent-Calaway.  They talked about Nadine’s father for some time.  These talks would be a weekly occurrence until Nadine’s death the following spring at the age of ninety-nine.

It would be three days until Chloe caught up with Samuel and asked him about the shovels, and the door to the lighthouse.  Chloe questioned him repeatedly, but his response was always the same.

_“Samuel has no idea what you’re talking about.”_

Chloe didn’t believe him.

It would be four days until Chloe and Max went to the Arcadia Bay Cemetery.  They visited the graves of Rachel Amber, Justin Williams, and William Price, before scouring the site for the grave of Joshua Trent.  They found it, but saw that Victoria was already there.  They dared not venture further for fear of causing a scene, but Chloe could see the simple epitaph on Joshua Trent's tombstone from the distance at which she stood.

**_“GOD HELP ME, I TRIED AS HARD AS I COULD.”_ **

It would be one month before Interpol caught up with Sean Prescott in Vienna, Austria.  He was extradited back to the United States and awaited trial for two months, before he suffered a stroke in his cell, and died at the age of fifty-three.

It would be three months before Chloe Elizabeth Price married Maxine Caulfield for a second time, and this time they did it right.  In Seattle.  With rings, and a church, and everything.  Warren showed up, as did a very happy (and four months pregnant) Kate Bradford, along with her husband Josh.  She still wore her hair up in a scientifically impossible pouf, and she still wore a crucifix around her neck.  Taylor Christensen showed up with her wife Kira, which did not surprise Courtney Wagner, but shocked the shit out of Victoria Chase (who had to hear it second-hand, as she did not attend).  Brooke Scott came to the reception, saw Warren (and Warren’s wedding ring), and promptly hit the bar.

While Max Caulfield’s photographs of the people of Arcadia Bay made it into the _Arcadia Bay Beacon_ in the days after the storm failed to hit, it would be seven months before one of those pictures: that of a teenage girl in a black hoodie, her face scarred, her eyes haunted, her mouth dribbling blood as the storm bore down in the background, won Max the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography, and the million dollar check that comes with it.

It wouldn’t be fair to say that _no one_ saw Rose Fichtner, the girl in the prize winning photo, ever again.  All Chloe and Max knew was that they themselves never did.

It would be nine months before Max Caulfield’s first and only year as the teacher of the photography program at Blackwell Academy of Arts and Sciences came to an end.  Chloe and Max moved out of town soon after… for what proved to be the final time.  But they came back to visit Arcadia Bay regularly.  Chloe knew that she’d be never shut of the hometown that she’d spent the better part of three decades hating… and she was okay with that.  It was _home,_ even if she never lived there again.

It would be three years before Jerome Flit and his husband Parker came upon a cave in the woods east of Arcadia Bay.  Inside they found what appeared to be human bones, and promptly called the police.  Preliminary findings, however, revealed that the bones were not only not of human origin, but showed the signs of being the bones of an ancient ape species known as a _Gigantopithecus._ This was impossible in quite a few ways, not least of all in that Gigantopithici were only ever theorized to be native in America and, from all signs, the creature these bones belonged to only showed signs of being dead for less than five years.  Anthropologists, archaeologists, and zoologists the world over requested to examine the bones, and all were stumped.

And yes, Michael Francis Luder did a video on this as well.

It would be four years until, after almost a decade of tinkering, Warren Graham published his debut novel.  It was a science-fiction novel called _The Dormant King._ It didn’t sell a whole lot of copies, but the people who read it seemed to like it well enough.

And it would be one-hundred-ninety-two years until a little boy lost his way in the Arcadia Bay forest.  He yelled to the sky, pleading for help, and that help came.  It came in the form of a teenaged white girl who called herself _“Tobanga.”_ She was tall, wore clothes strange to the little boy’s eyes, like a black leather jacket, a black beanie, and a necklace with three bullets making up the pendant.  She had blue hair, which the boy had never seen before.  Tobanga asked the little boy for his name.  When the little boy answered, Tobanga smiled and asked him if he knew what a stable time-loop was, before imparting unto him a great and terrible knowledge with a touch of her hand and sending him farther away than he ever could have dreamed or feared.

Screwed him up for life, the poor kid.

All of this is well and good, though.  Clearing the table as opposed to setting it, but there remains one question.  Some might say it’s the biggest one.

What of Max Caulfield and Chloe Price?

And it is with this question, sadly, that this narrative must fail.

Because as they began to re-enter Arcadia Bay on the day the storm failed to destroy the town, both of them knew that they had suffered, and fought for, and earned their love, and their future, but they had suffered, and fought for, and earned something else, as well.

Their privacy.

They’ve done enough for us.

But if any part of the game that is their lives together could possibly be given away, let it be this:

As they finally made it back into town, Chloe looked down at the girl who as holding her up as she regained her strength.  She remembered a chilly night the previous November.  The night she jumped off of a cliff.  The night she got her memories back.  That night, in each other’s arms, between the sheets of an Embassy Suites bedroom, gasping for breath and _laughing,_ Chloe hoped… and hoped… and _hoped_ that they would still laugh like that together when they were old ladies.

And as the future would show her, that was the first hope in the life of Chloe Price that was truly well-placed.

Because that’s what happened.

And don’t let anyone try to tell you differently.

* * *

**_ THE END _ **


	23. And Now, a Word From the Author...

Hi, all.  GeneralIrritation, here.

It has been a little over a year since I wrapped _Legend Has It,_ and in case I haven't said it, I want to thank you for reading it.  That and it's prequel, _Gun, With Occasional Hella,_ may not have reached the most people in the fandom, but it reached a hell of a lot more that I thought it was going to.  It's not set in a coffee shop, and the characters aren't screwing each other in public, so I thought I was going to get about thirty hits in total.  Not the tens of thousands that I wound up getting.  Which isn't to say I have anything against coffee shop AUs or smut, but I just know damn well that those have a far larger audience than noir and sci-fi on the fanfiction beat.

And though I have been silent this past year, I have still been among your number, delighting in your triumphs and waging invisible war upon your demons.  Like the Queen song goes, " _You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it. I thank you all."_

But one thing has happened this past year that is worth talking about.  A big thing, in fact, and it happened quite recently.

Why yes, I am talking about the announcement of _Life is Strange: Before the Storm._

And folks... It's gonna be _bad._ It's a prequel no one asked for starring an off-brand Chloe from the makers of _Ratchet Reloaded HD._   The odds are not in this accursed thing's favor.  In the words of the immortal Lord Buckethead, _"_ _It is going to be a shitshow."_

And the saddest, most damnable thing about it all is that even the people most excited for it know it's going to be bad.  They see all the warning signs and have resigned themselves to having their hearts broken again for whatever reason.  Maybe it's because they want to see the characters they love so much one last time, even in the bastardized versions that _BtS_ will no doubt provide.  Maybe it's because the heart and soul of this fandom has little-to-no representation in video games, and that something bad is better than nothing at all.

It kills me.

It also motivates me.

Is Chloe Price to return this summer?

**Then by God, she shall.**

I am pleased to announce that **_Coda_** , the third and final story in the _Girls who Broke the World_ series, is currently being written at the breakneck pace I am known for.

Here are the things I can tell you:

-It will serve as both sequel and midquel, focusing equally on the events of November 9, 2019 and June 6, 2014.

-Several characters from _Life is Strange_ that never showed up in _GWOH_ or _LHI_ will be making their debuts.

-It will be about 15k to 20k words long, though if I fall outside that number, expect it be on the longer side than the shorter side.  In case you haven't noticed, I have explosive diarrhea of the keyboard.

-It will, functionally, be a comedy.  No mystery, no gunshots, no cliff-jumping, no nosebleeds, no storms.  It's just an excuse for these characters to hang out.  Lord knows they've earned it.

-It will be six chapters long.

-All six chapters will be dropped on the same day.

-And that day will be **Thursday, June 22, 2017.**

So go ahead.  Buy the goddamned prequel.  Walk into that buzzsaw.

But walk in knowing that someone out there thinks these characters are special.  Walk in knowing that someone knows how to use them.  Walk in knowing you deserve better, and have gotten it quite recently. 

Walk in knowing someone out there loves you.

With the highest regards and lowest comedy,  
_-GeneralIrritation_


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